This page uses content from the Michael Ironside 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.

Michael Ironside (born Fred Ironside February 12, 1950 in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian character actor. He has also worked as a producer, film director, and screenwriter in movie and television series in various Canadian and American works. He is best known for playing villains or "tough guy" heroes, though he has also portrayed sympathetic characters. Ironside is a method actor who keeps in character between takes.

One of Ironside's early roles was in Scanners, an early film by David Cronenberg. His breakthrough role was in the television miniseries V: The Final Battle as Ham Tyler. He is also known for his roles in Top Gun and Total Recall. He was also tapped to replace Roy Scheider as captain of the high-tech submarine seaQuest in the third season of "seaQuest DSV" as Captain Oliver Hudson. However, NBC cancelled the series after only thirteen episodes with Ironside as the star.

He has recently become a star in the realm of video games, as he has voiced Tom Clancy's character of Sam Fisher in the Splinter Cell games along with the PSP game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Essentials, and is cast as the Global Defense Initiative's General Jack Granger in the upcoming Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars.

Ironside has recently signed a 5 year deal to portray Captain Jonas Trager in the Spaceworks Television scifi series, Ice Planet.

Trivia

An interesting piece of Ironside trivia is Ironside's success as an arm wrestler in his teenage years. It is not known if he still practises the sport. Curiously enough, he has "lost" his left arm in at least two of his films (Starship Troopers and The Machinist) and both arms in a fight with Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in the film Total Recall.

Partial filmography

Actor

• Scanners (1981)
• Visiting Hours (1982)
• Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983)
• V (The Series) (1983)
• Murder in Space (TV Series) (1985)
• Top Gun (1986)
• Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987)
• Total Recall (1990)
• Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
• Guncrazy (1992)
• Free Willy (1993)
• The Next Karate Kid (1994)
• Major Payne (1995)
• seaQuest 2032 (1995)
• The Arrow (1997)
• Starship Troopers (1997)
• Chicago Cab, aka Hellcab (1998)
• The Arrangement (1999)
• The Omega Code (1999)
• The Perfect Storm (2000)
• Borderline Normal (2000)
• Heavy Metal 2000 (2000) (voice)
• Jett Jackson: The Movie (2001)
• The Last Chapter (2002)
• The Machinist (2004)
• Smallville (TV series) (2004)
• Andromeda (TV series) (2004)
• Young Blades (2005)
• Desperate Housewives (2005)
• Deepwater (2006)
• Stargate SG-1 (2006)

Voice acting

• in animated series
  • Superman: The Animated Series ...as Darkseid
  • The New Batman Adventures ...as '80's Batman
• in video games
  • RLH (2002) ...as Cmdr. Mason
  • Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (2002) ...as Sam Fisher
  • Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (2004) ...as Sam Fisher
  • Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005) ...as Sam Fisher
  • Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Essentials (2006) ... as Sam Fisher
  • Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent (2006) ...as Sam Fisher
  • TimeShift (2006) ...as Doctor Krone
  • Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (2007) ...as Global Defense Initiative General Jack Granger

Director

• The Arrangement (1999)

Screenwriter

• The Arrangement (1999)
• Chaindance (1990)

External links

• Michael Ironside Interview at www.sci-fi-online.com
• MichaelIronsideFans.Net

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