Scott Sowers

Scott Nicolai Sowers (November 5, 1963 – April 1, 2018) was an American actor born in Arlington County, Virginia, who built a career spanning stage, film, television, and voice work over nearly three decades. He attended Washington-Lee High School, graduating in 1982 alongside classmate Sandra Bullock, before pursuing formal training at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He subsequently relocated to New York City to begin his professional career.

Sowers established himself first as a stage actor. In 1989, New York Magazine cited his performance as Starns in Heathen Valley. Two years later, in 1991, he co-founded the Signature Theatre Company with James Houghton. His Broadway career ran from 1992 to 2007 and included productions of A Few Good Men, Bus Stop, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Inherit the Wind. His role as the colonel in A Few Good Men, which played at the Shubert Theatre, drew notice from the Chicago Sun-Times in 1992; the production subsequently toured nationally, and Sowers received the Drama-Logue Award for Performance for his work in that role. In 1996 he appeared on Broadway in Bus Stop, playing Will Masters. His most prominent stage role came in 2004, when he portrayed Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire at Studio 54 in New York City; the following year, with John C. Reilly taking over the role of Stanley, Sowers remained in the production in the smaller part of Steve. In 2007 he made his final Broadway appearance in Inherit the Wind.

Beyond Broadway, Sowers performed at a range of regional and international venues, including the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Connecticut, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Baltimore Center Stage, and the Oslo Festival in Norway. With the Ensemble Studio Theatre he appeared in productions of Matthew and the Pastor's Wife, Lenin's Embalmers, Princes of Waco, Lucy, and Hand to God. In September 2012 he participated in Romulus Linney ... Back Home in the Mountains: A Tribute to Romulus Linney at the Valborg Theatre of Appalachian State University.

In film, Sowers appeared as a mercenary in the 1995 Steven Seagal action film Under Siege 2: Dark Territory and as a prison guard in the 1995 drama Dead Man Walking. He played an unrepentant condemned man in the Coen Brothers' True Grit in 2010, opposite Jeff Bridges, and had a minor role as Russo in a 2013 episode of the CBS series Blue Bloods. Additional film credits include Erin Brockovich (2000) and A Season for Miracles (1999). On television, he was best known for playing Detective Parker in the ABC series Cracker from 1997 to 1999. He appeared in multiple episodes of Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and portrayed Uncle Drake in the TV series Get Hit in 2009. In 2010 he appeared as Joseph Earl Dinler in the Boardwalk Empire episode "Anastasia."

Sowers also worked extensively in audio and voice performance. He recorded dramatic readings for audiobooks, including works by Hunter S. Thompson, and provided voice characterization for the short documentary An American Synagogue. In video games, he voiced Scarface's men in Batman: Dark Tomorrow (2003), contributed to Manhunt 2 (2007), and voiced the character Arnie in Homefront (2011).

Sowers died of a heart attack on April 1, 2018, at a friend's home in New York City. He was 54 years old.