BRUCE DERN

Bruce Dern first performed as a guest star, in many 1960s television shows, including Route 66, Naked City, Sea Hunt, Surfside 6, 77 Sunset Strip, The Outer Limits. In 1964, Bruce Dern performed in an Alfred Hitchcock film, Marnie. Also in 1964, he had small role in flashbacks in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte. During the next 5 years, Dern continued performing in several TV war, crime and western shows, but with multiple episodes per show, as different characters, including: Wagon Train (3), The Virginian (3), Rawhide (1), 12 O'Clock High (4), The Fugitive (5), The F.B.I.(2), The Big Valley (5), Gunsmoke (4) and Bonanza (2). During that period, he also performed in several films, The Wild Angels (1966), The War Wagon, The Trip (1967), Psych-Out, Will Penny(1968), and the early Clint Eastwood film, Hang 'Em High (1968) Support Your Local Sheriff!(1969). Among Dern's first 20 film roles was a part in the Sydney Pollack film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, in 1969. In 1972, he played in 4 films: as the enemy and killer of John Wayne's character in The Cowboys; then in the sci-fi film Silent Running; with Jack Nicholson in The King of Marvin Gardens; and also in Thumb Tripping. By 1974, he performed with Robert Redford and Karen Black, with a major role in the The Great Gatsby. He has a reputation of playing villainous characters, although his best-known role may be that of Freeman Lowell, the caretaker of Earth's last forests in Silent Running (1972). Other roles include Tom Buchanan in Robert Redford's The Great Gatsby; or a psychotic blimp pilot who launches a terrorist attack at the Super Bowl in Black Sunday(1977), and as Capt. Bob Hyde in Coming Home(1978), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.