Robby Benson

Robby Benson, born Robin David Segal on January 21, 1956, in Dallas, Texas, is an American actor, director, musician, and educator. The son of Freda Ann Benson, a singer, actor, and business promotions manager, and Jerry Segal, a writer, Benson grew up in a Jewish family that relocated from Dallas to New York City when he was five years old. He adopted his mother's surname as his stage name at age ten and went on to graduate as valedictorian from Lincoln Square Academy in Manhattan at fourteen.

Benson's performing career began in childhood. His first screen appearance was an uncredited role in the 1967 film Wait Until Dark, and his Broadway debut came in the play Zelda, followed by the musical The Rothschilds in 1970. He continued working in theater through 1981, with his Broadway credits also including The Pirates of Penzance. Early television work included a recurring role on the daytime soap opera Search for Tomorrow from 1971 to 1972.

Through the 1970s, Benson established himself as a film actor specializing in coming-of-age roles. His credits from that period include Jory (1972), Jeremy (1973), and Ode to Billy Joe (1976), in which he played the title character Billy Joe McAllister. In 1975 he appeared in Death Be Not Proud and Lucky Lady, and that same year he screen-tested for the role of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, a part that ultimately went to Mark Hamill. One on One (1977), which Benson co-wrote with his father Jerry Segal, was followed by Ice Castles (1978), for which he learned to ice skate from scratch to fulfill the film's extensive skating requirements. Additional film work from this period included The End (1978), Die Laughing (1980), and Tribute (1980). In 1981 he co-starred in The Chosen, an adaptation of Chaim Potok's novel of the same name. Two years later, he portrayed Olympic 10,000-meter gold medalist Billy Mills in Running Brave (1983), and his physical training for that production carried over into his completion of the 1983 New York City Marathon in a time of 3:05:15.

Benson's career extended well beyond film acting. In 1991 he provided the voice of the Beast in Disney's animated feature Beauty and the Beast, directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise and featuring Paige O'Hara as Belle, a role he reprised across numerous sequels, spin-offs, and related Disney media. Later in the 1990s he voiced the lead character J.T. Marsh in the science fiction animated series Exosquad. As a composer, he wrote the song "We Are Not Alone," performed by Karla DeVito on the soundtrack of the 1985 John Hughes film The Breakfast Club, earning an RIAA Gold Records Award for the work. His 2007 novel Who Stole the Funny?: A Novel of Hollywood appeared on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller list. He has also appeared in a recurring role as Dr. Mauer on Apple TV+'s Severance.

Benson built a substantial career as a television director, with credits spanning numerous series including Thunder Alley, Ellen, Evening Shade, and six episodes of the sitcom Friends. He has also held academic positions at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, the University of Utah, the University of South Carolina, and Indiana University.

It was during the run of The Pirates of Penzance that Benson met singer and actress Karla DeVito, whom he married on July 11, 1982. The couple have two children, a daughter named Lyric, born in 1983, and a son named Zephyr, born in 1992.

Benson has been a prominent advocate for heart research, a cause rooted in his own medical history. Diagnosed as a teenager with a heart murmur stemming from a bicuspid aortic valve defect, he began experiencing dizziness and loss of consciousness in his late twenties and underwent his first open-heart surgery in October 1984 to repair the valve, receiving a bovine valve transplant in the process. After that valve failed, a second surgery in 2000 involved the Ross procedure. Persistent breathing difficulties over the following six years led to a third surgery, which revealed that the earlier procedure had caused his aortic valve to buckle and close. A fourth surgery in 2010, known as the reverse Ross procedure, addressed the resulting damage. His advocacy work included writing the book, lyrics, and music for an original Off-Broadway production called Open Heart in 2004, in which he also performed. He published a memoir about his medical experiences, I'm Not Dead ... Yet!, in June 2012. Benson practices Transcendental Meditation.