Adrian Pasdar - Rotten Tomatoes Celebrity Profile

Biography

This page uses content from the Adrian Pasdar biography page on the English version of Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Rotten Tomatoes disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.

Adrian Kayvan Pasdar (born April 30, 1965) is an American actor and film director.

He is perhaps best known for his current role on the NBC drama Heroes.

Early years

Pasdar was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His father, Homayoon Pasdar, was a cardiac surgeon who was born in Iran and moved to the United States, working as a surgeon near Philadelphia. His mother, Rosemarie Sbresny was born in Königsberg, Germany, and worked as a nurse before becoming an English teacher in France.

Pasdar won a football scholarship to the University of Florida. However, he was badly injured in a car accident during his freshman year. The accident left his face scarred, his legs badly injured, and kept him in a wheelchair for several months. Pasdar finished his freshman year in a wheelchair, doing intensive physical therapy and turning his attention to campus stage productions and rediscovering a childhood interest in writing and acting. No longer able to play football, he dropped out of school and returned home, taking a job with a theater group, People's Light and Theatre Company. Here he worked on sound and lighting and also did set construction. One day, while constructing a set, he cut off the end of his left thumb. He used the resulting medical compensation to pay for attendance at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in Los Angeles.

Acting and directing

Film

At the age of 19, he auditioned for a role in Top Gun. Director Tony Scott was so impressed that he wrote the part of "Chipper" just for him. This led to bigger roles in Solarbabies (1986), Streets of Gold (1986), and Kathryn Bigelow's 1987 cult vampire movie Near Dark (1987), with Pasdar in the lead role of Caleb Colton. Other major roles include Vital Signs (1990). In 1992, he left Hollywood and returned to New York, working as a cashier for room and board, while taking the occasional small part, such as Frankie in Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way (1993).

He wrote and directed the short film Beyond Belief and directed his first feature film, the neo-noir Cement, in 1999. The film stars Chris Penn, Jeffrey Wright, Sherilyn Fenn, Henry Czerny and is written by Farscape's screenwriter Justin Monjo.

Television

Pasdar's major break into television came in 1995, when he was cast as the title character on the short-lived Fox series Profit.

From 2000 to 2002, Pasdar played the lead role of Anthropology Professor Declan Dunn in the spooky cult drama series Mysterious Ways on PAX.

Pasdar played David McClaren in the final two seasons of the long-running CBS drama Judging Amy, from 2004 through 2005. In 2006, he had a high-profile guest role as Gabrielle Solis' sleazy lawyer in Desperate Housewives.

He currently stars in the NBC superhero drama Heroes as Nathan Petrelli.

Marriage and family

Pasdar married lead singer Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in June 2000. The couple first met in May 1999, at the wedding of band member Emily Robison and singer-songwriter Charlie Robison. They were married in Las Vegas's Little White Wedding Chapel, in a $55 no-frills ceremony officiated by the chapel's "Pastor Ann."

They have two children, Jackson Slade Pasdar (born March 15, 2001) and Beckett Finn Pasdar (born July 14, 2004). Adrian and his family currently live in Venice.

Trivia

His film company is Bobcat Films. He has a Bobcat tattoo on his upper right arm.

He also has a tattoo of the Chinese character for Strength, which he got while filming Shang Hai Yi Jiu Er Ling (1991).

External Links

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