Ron Perlman

Ron Perlman is an American actor born on April 13, 1950, in Washington Heights, Manhattan, New York City. His mother, Dorothy (née Rosen), worked as a municipal employee, and his father, Bertram "Bert" Perlman, was a jazz drummer and television repairman. Perlman graduated from George Washington High School in 1967 and went on to earn a bachelor's degree from Lehman College in 1971, followed by a master's degree in theater arts from the University of Minnesota in 1973.

Perlman's father played a direct role in shaping his son's professional path, encouraging him to pursue acting after watching him perform in a college production of Guys and Dolls. Perlman made his television debut in the soap opera Ryan's Hope in 1979, the same year he began his Broadway career. His stage credits span from 1979 to 1996 and include Bus Stop, Teibele and Her Demon, and A Few Good Men. He was born and raised in New York, New York.

His feature film debut came in Jean-Jacques Annaud's Quest for Fire (1981), in which he played Amoukar. Annaud later cast him as Salvatore in The Name of the Rose (1986), a role Perlman nearly did not take, as he had been considering leaving the acting profession at the time. His breakthrough came with the television series Beauty and the Beast (1987–1990), where he starred as Vincent opposite Linda Hamilton. That performance earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series in 1989.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Perlman accumulated a wide range of film roles. He played One in the French-language film The City of Lost Children (1995), Johner in Alien Resurrection (1997), and Koulikov in Enemy at the Gates (2001). He became particularly associated with director Guillermo del Toro, appearing in Cronos (1992), Blade II (2002), and the title role of Hellboy (2004), which he reprised in Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), as well as in the direct-to-video animated features Hellboy: Sword of Storms (2006) and Hellboy: Blood and Iron (2007). His collaboration with del Toro continued with Pacific Rim (2013), Nightmare Alley (2021), and del Toro's Pinocchio (2022).

In 2008, Perlman joined the FX series Sons of Anarchy as Clay Morrow, the national president of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, a role he held through 2013. He played Nino in Drive (2011) and Benedict Drask in Don't Look Up (2021). Additional television work includes appearances in Highlander: The Series, The Outer Limits, The Magnificent Seven, and the Amazon series Hand of God. He also appeared in the second and third seasons of StartUp (2017–2018) as Wes Chandler.

Perlman has maintained an extensive career as a voice actor across animation, video games, and other media. In animation, his credits include Clayface in the DC Animated Universe (1992–2003), Slade in Teen Titans (2003–2006), Mr. Lancer in Danny Phantom (2004–2007), The Lich in the Adventure Time franchise (2011–2023), the Stabbington brothers in Tangled (2010), Xibalba in The Book of Life (2014), and Optimus Primal in Transformers: Power of the Primes (2018) and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023). In video games, he voiced Lord Hood in Halo 2 (2004) and Halo 3 (2007) and has served as the narrator of the Fallout game series since 1997, a role he has continued in the associated television series beginning in 2024.

Perlman married jewelry designer Opal Stone on Valentine's Day 1981. The couple had two children, daughter Blake Amanda, born in 1984, and son Brandon Avery, born in 1990. They separated in May 2019 and subsequently divorced. In 2022, Perlman married his StartUp co-star Allison Dunbar in Italy. His son Brandon produces electronic music under the stage name Delroy Edwards.