Keith Gordon

Keith Gordon is an American actor and film director, born on February 3, 1961, in New York City. The son of Mark Gordon, an actor and stage director, and Barbara Gordon, he was raised in an atheist Jewish family. His interest in performing began at age twelve, when he attended a Broadway production of Of Mice and Men starring James Earl Jones. That early exposure to the stage led to his own Broadway appearance in 1979, when he performed in King Richard II.

Gordon's screen acting career began with the 1978 film Jaws 2, in which he played class clown Doug. The following year he appeared in Bob Fosse's semi-autobiographical All That Jazz as the teenage version of protagonist Joe Gideon, a role that reunited him with his Jaws 2 co-star Roy Scheider. Also in 1979, he appeared in Brian De Palma's Home Movies as a film student, and he returned to work with De Palma in 1980 on the erotic thriller Dressed to Kill, playing the son of Angie Dickinson's character. His most prominent acting role came in 1983 with John Carpenter's Christine, adapted from the Stephen King novel, in which Gordon played Arnie Cunningham, the young man who acquires the possessed titular automobile.

Gordon continued acting through the mid-1980s, taking on the role of Lloyd Muldaur in The Legend of Billie Jean in 1985 and co-writing the screenplay for the 1986 film Static, in which he also appeared. That same year he played Jason Melon, the son of Rodney Dangerfield's character, in the comedy Back to School. His final onscreen film appearance came in 2001 with Delivering Milo.

Transitioning to directing, Gordon made his feature debut in 1988 with The Chocolate War, a film about a student resisting the entrenched hierarchies of his Catholic school. Though it performed poorly at the box office, it earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Feature. His 1992 film A Midnight Clear, set among American soldiers in the Ardennes during the period surrounding the Battle of the Bulge, brought him an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Screenplay. His subsequent directorial work in film includes Mother Night, adapted from the Kurt Vonnegut novel, as well as Waking the Dead and The Singing Detective, the latter of which received a Best Film nomination at the Sitges Catalan International Film Festival in 2003.

Gordon's television directing credits span several decades and include episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, Gideon's Crossing, Dexter, House, The Bridge, Homeland, The Leftovers, Better Call Saul, and the second and third seasons of Fargo. He also directed portions of the miniseries Wild Palms and appeared in the 2006 Iraq War documentary Whose War.