Tom Hulce

Tom Hulce

Tom Hulce, December 2006
Born Thomas Edward Hulce
December 6, 1953 (1953-12-06) (age 57)
Detroit, Michigan, USA
Occupation Actor and Producer
Years active 1975-present

Tom Hulce (pronounced /hʊls/; born Thomas Edward Hulce on December 6, 1953) is an American actor and theater producer. As an actor, he is perhaps best known for his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Mozart in the movie Amadeus and his role as "Pinto" in National Lampoon's Animal House. Additional acting awards included a total of four Golden Globe nominations, an Emmy Award, and a Tony Award nomination. Hulce retired from acting in the mid-1990s in order to focus upon stage directing and producing.[1] In 2007, he won a Tony Award as a lead producer of the Broadway musical Spring Awakening.

Contents

Early life

Hulce was born in Detroit, Michigan (some sources incorrectly say Whitewater, Wisconsin[2]). The youngest of four children,[3] he was raised in Plymouth, Michigan. His mother, Joanna (née Winkleman), sang briefly with Phil Spitalny's All-Girl Orchestra, and his father, Raymond Albert Hulce, worked for the Ford Motor Company.[4] [5][6] Although he originally wanted to be a singer as a child, he switched to acting after his voice changed during his teenage years.[7] He left home at the age of 15 and attended the North Carolina School of the Arts.[8]

Acting career

Hulce made his acting debut in 1975, playing opposite Anthony Perkins in Equus on Broadway. Throughout the rest of the 1970s and the early 1980s, he worked primarily as a theater actor,[9] taking occasional parts in movies. His first film role was in the James Dean-influenced film September 30, 1955 in 1977. His next movie role was as freshmen student Lawrence "Pinto" Kroger in the highly popular National Lampoon's Animal House (1978).

In the early 1980s, Hulce was chosen over intense competition (which included David Bowie and Mikhail Baryshnikov[10]) to play the role of Mozart in director Milos Forman's film version of Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus. In 1985, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, losing to his co-star, F. Murray Abraham. In 1989, he received his second Best Actor Golden Globe Award nomination for a critically acclaimed performance [11] as a mentally challenged garbage collector in the 1988 movie Dominick and Eugene. He played supporting roles in Parenthood (1989), Fearless (1993) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994).

In 1990, he was nominated for his first Emmy Award for his performance as the 1960s civil rights activist Michael Schwerner in the 1990 TV-movie Murder in Mississippi. He starred as Joseph Stalin's projectionist in Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky's 1991 film The Inner Circle. In 1996, he won an Emmy Award for his role as a gay pediatrician in a television-movie version of the Wendy Wasserstein play The Heidi Chronicles, starring Jamie Lee Curtis. Also in 1996, he provided both the speaking and singing voice of the protagonist Quasimodo for the Disney animated feature The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Although Hulce largely retired from acting in the mid-1990s, he had bit parts in the recent movies Jumper (2008) and Stranger Than Fiction (2006).

Hulce remained active in theater throughout his entire acting career. In addition to Equus, he also appeared in Broadway productions of A Memory of Two Mondays and A Few Good Men, for which he was a Tony Award nominee in 1990. In the mid-1980s, he appeared in two different productions of playwright Larry Kramer's early AIDS-era drama The Normal Heart.[12] In 1992, he starred in a Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Hamlet.[13] His regional theatre credits include Eastern Standard at the Seattle Repertory Theatre.[14]

Career as producer

Hulce shepherded two major projects to fruition: the six-hour, two-evening stage adaptation of John Irving's The Cider House Rules, and Talking Heads, a festival of Alan Bennett's plays which won six Obie Awards, a Drama Desk Award, a special Outer Critics Circle Award, and a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. He also headed 10 Million Miles, a musical project by Keith Bunin and Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter Patty Griffin, that premiered in Spring 2007 at the Atlantic Theater Company.

Hulce was a lead producer of the Broadway hit Spring Awakening, which won eight Tony Awards in 2007, including one for Best Musical. In January of 2010, Hulce and producer Ira Pittelman teamed up for the second time since Spring Awakening to produce a stage adaptation of the Green Day album American Idiot. The musical had its world premiere in Berkeley, California, at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2009 and opened on Broadway in April of 2010. He also produced the 2004 movie A Home at the End of the World, based upon Michael Cunningham's novel. The film was directed by Michael Mayer, who would later produce both Spring Awakening and American Idiot on Broadway.

Awards and nominations

Theater awards:[15][16]

2010 Tony Award® Best Musical American Idiot [nominee] Produced by Tom Hulce

2010 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Musical American Idiot [nominee] Produced by Tom Hulce

2007 Tony Award® Best Musical Spring Awakening [winner] Produced by Tom Hulce

2007 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Musical Spring Awakening [winner] Produced by Tom Hulce

2003 Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play Tom Hulce [nominee] (for Talking Heads )

2000 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Director of a Play Thomas Hulce [nominee] ( for "The Cider House Rules, Part One" )

1993 Helen Hayes Award Outstanding Lead Actor, Resident Play [nominee] (for Hamlet, The Shakespeare Theatre)

1990 Tony Award® Best Actor in Play [nominee] (for A Few Good Men)

1990 Helen Hayes Award Outstanding Lead Actor, Non-Resident Play [nominee] (for A Few Good Men)

Film/Television awards:

See Filmography below

Filmography

Year Film Role Notes
1975 Forget-Me-Not-Lane television movie
1976 Song of Myself television movie
1977 September 30, 1955
1978 National Lampoon's Animal House Lawrence "Pinto" Kroger
1980 Those Lips, Those Eyes
1984 Amadeus Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Nominated-Academy Award for Best Actor
Nominated-Golden Globe Award:Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama
Won-David di Donatello – Best Foreign Actor
1986 The Rise and Rise of Daniel Rocket
1986 Echo Park Jonathan
1987 Slam Dance C.C. Drood
1988 Dominick and Eugene Dominick "Nicky" Luciano Nominated-Golden Globe Award:Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama
1988 Shadow Man Shadowman/David Rubenstin
1989 Parenthood Larry Buckman
1990 Murder in Mississippi Mickey Schwerner Nominated-Golden Globe Award:Best Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture made for Television
Nominated-Emmy Award:Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie
1991 The Inner Circle Ivan Sanshin
1993 Fearless Brillstein
1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Henry Clerval
1994 Wings of Courage Antoine de Saint Exupéry
1995 The Heidi Chronicles Peter Patrone Won-Emmy Award:Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie
Won-CableACE Award for Best Supporting Actor - Miniseries or Movie
Nominated-Golden Globe Award:Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture made for Television
1996 The Hunchback of Notre Dame Quasimodo voice-work
2002 The Hunchback of Notre Dame II Quasimodo direct-to-video release. voice-work
2004 A Home at the End of the World as producer
2006 Stranger Than Fiction Dr. Cayly

References

  1. ↑ Producer Hulce Springs to New Rialto Role Variety, Dec. 3, 2006
  2. ↑ Where Have You Been, Tom Hulce? Pittsburgh Tribune, August 13, 2004
  3. ↑ With Amadeus, Tom Hulce Finds His Career Crescendoing People, December 10, 1984
  4. ↑ The New Netherland Ancestors of Thomas Edward Hulce
  5. ↑ William Holden, Patrick Swayze, and Tom Hulce: their cousinship with Jean Margaret (Kennedy) Mitchelson through the Betts family
  6. ↑ "Playing Ordinary Man Difficult for Hulce", Charlotte Observer, December 11, 1988.
  7. ↑ Amadeus Reinvents Himself, Playbill, December 5, 2006.
  8. ↑ Hulce Found His Calling in Ann Arbor's Theater Community Detroit Free Press, April 18, 2010
  9. ↑ Tom Hulce at Filmreference.com
  10. ↑ With Amadeus, Tom Hulce Finds His Career Crescendoing People, December 10, 1984
  11. ↑ AMC Movie Guide
  12. ↑ The Heart of the Matter Gay Times, July 1986
  13. ↑ "Hamlet," Hulce & the Issue of Character The Washington Post, November 23, 1992
  14. ↑ Tom Hulce at Filmreference.com
  15. ↑ Internet Broadway Database
  16. ↑ http://www.helenhayes.org

External links

Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor – Miniseries or a Movie

Scott Jacoby (1972) · Marlon Brando (1979) · George Grizzard (1980) · David Warner (1981) · Laurence Olivier (1982) · Richard Kiley (1983) · Art Carney (1984) · Karl Malden (1985) · John Malkovich (1986) · Dabney Coleman (1987) · John Shea (1988) · Derek Jacobi (1989) · Vincent Gardenia (1990) · James Earl Jones (1991) · Hume Cronyn (1992) · Beau Bridges (1993) · Michael A. Goorjian (1994) · Donald Sutherland (1995) · Tom Hulce (1996) · Beau Bridges (1997) · George C. Scott (1998) · Peter O'Toole (1999) · Hank Azaria (2000)

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