Ray Dooley

Ray Dooley, born in 1953, is an actor, director, and educator whose career spans Broadway, film, television, and regional theatre. Raised on Long Island, New York, he earned a B.A. in English and Theatre & Drama, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, before completing an M.F.A. in Acting at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. He is a member of Actors' Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Canadian Actor's Equity, the North Carolina Theatre Conference, and the National Association of Schools of Theatre.

Dooley's Broadway career spans 1982 to 1986. He appeared as Malcolm in Macbeth, which ran from January 28 to February 14, 1982, and as Raymond Brown in So Long on Lonely Street, which ran from April 3 to May 18, 1986. He was also attached to The Stitch in Time, in which he played Major Miller, though that production never officially opened, closing on January 6, 1981. His Off-Broadway work includes the role of Harry Thunder in Wild Oats at the CSC Theatre and a role in Henry IV, Part 1 at the CSC Repertory Company. In 1981, his Off-Broadway performance in Peer Gynt earned him a Village Voice Obie Award.

His film credits include The Trial of Standing Bear (1988) and Stonebrook (1998). Dooley has also worked in commercials and television throughout his career.

In 1989, Dooley joined the PlayMakers Repertory Company, the professional theatre associated with the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, after reconnecting with artistic director David Hammond, who had been an instructor at the American Conservatory Theater during Dooley's time there as a student. Describing his earlier career as a nomadic lifestyle, Dooley settled in Chapel Hill and has since appeared in more than forty productions with PlayMakers. He was named Interim Chair of the UNC Department of Dramatic Art in 1999 and became Chair in 2000. He heads the Professional Actor Training Program and serves as a drama faculty member at the university.

Among his regional accolades, Dooley received Robert's Reviews' Triangle Theater Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2003 for his work in Uncle Vanya and Dinner With Friends, and the Triangle Theater Award for Best Actor in 2004 for Not About Heroes. In 2006, he played the title role in Cyrano de Bergerac at PlayMakers Repertory Company and appeared as Father Flynn in the European premiere of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt: A Parable at Vienna's English Theatre, directed by Martin L. Platt.