Tony Goldwyn

Tony Goldwyn is an American actor and director born on May 20, 1960, in Los Angeles, California. He is the son of actress Jennifer Howard and film producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr., and the grandson of film mogul Samuel Goldwyn and actress Frances Howard on his father's side, and playwright Sidney Howard and actress Clare Eames on his mother's side. One of his maternal great-great-grandfathers was Maryland governor and senator William T. Hamilton. Goldwyn pursued his education at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He continued his training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and at HB Studio in New York City.

Goldwyn began his screen career in guest roles in the mid-1980s, making his film debut as Darren in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives in 1986. His breakthrough came in 1990 when he played Carl Bruner, the friend-turned-betrayer of Patrick Swayze's character, in the fantasy thriller Ghost, the highest-grossing film of that year and the most rented videocassette of 1991. The performance earned him a nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor. He went on to portray Harold Nixon in the biographical film Nixon in 1995, a role that brought him a SAG Award nomination, and Neil Armstrong in the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. In 1999, he voiced the title character in the Disney animated feature Tarzan, which grossed over $400 million worldwide, and later reprised the role in the video games Tarzan: Untamed and Kingdom Hearts. Additional film credits include Colonel Bagley in The Last Samurai in 2003, Johnathon Collingwood in the horror film The Last House on the Left in 2009, Andrew Prior in the Divergent film series from 2014 to 2015, and Paul Cohen in King Richard in 2021, the latter earning him a second SAG Award nomination. In 2023, he appeared in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer and voiced Theodore Roosevelt in an Audible audiobook recording of the autobiography of Alice Roosevelt Longworth.

On television, Goldwyn is best known for starring as President Fitzgerald Grant III on the ABC drama Scandal from 2012 to 2018, a role for which he also directed multiple episodes and for which the series received a Peabody Award. He had a recurring role on Law & Order: Criminal Intent as Frank Goren, brother of the lead character played by Vincent D'Onofrio, and performed acting and directing duties on the first season of Showtime's Dexter. Since 2024, he has starred as Manhattan District Attorney Nicholas Baxter on Law & Order. As a director, his feature film credits include A Walk on the Moon, Someone Like You, The Last Kiss, and Conviction. He has also directed episodes of Without a Trace, The L Word, Grey's Anatomy, and Scandal, among other series, and directed and executive produced the pilot of the WE tv series The Divide in 2014.

Goldwyn's stage career spans both Off-Broadway and Broadway. At Second Stage Theatre, he appeared in Theresa Rebeck's Spike Heels in 1992 alongside Kevin Bacon and Julie White, and in 2006 starred opposite Kate Burton in Rebeck's The Water's Edge. His Broadway appearances, which span from 1995 to 2019, include Network, The Inheritance, and Blue Holiday, as well as Promises, Promises, in which he played the philandering business executive J. D. Sheldrake opposite Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth; the cast recording, released on June 23, 2010, features Goldwyn on three tracks. Outside of Broadway productions, he played Captain von Trapp opposite Laura Osnes in a concert performance of The Sound of Music at Carnegie Hall on April 25, 2012.

Goldwyn has been married to production designer Jane Michelle Musky since 1987, and they have two daughters. His brother John is a former executive of Paramount Pictures and executive producer of Dexter, and his brother Peter is a film producer and president of Samuel Goldwyn Films. Goldwyn has served as a former president of the Creative Coalition, a spokesperson for the AmeriCares Foundation, and an ambassador for The Innocence Project. He also serves on the Board of Governors for the Motion Picture and Television Fund.