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William Hall Macy (born March 13, 1950) is
an Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated American actor,
teacher, and director, in theatre, film, and television.
****
Early life
Macy was born in Miami, Florida, and grew
up in a Lutheran family in Georgia and Maryland. His father, also named
William Hall Macy, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and an Air
Medal for flying a B-17 bomber in World War II; he later ran a
construction company in Atlanta and worked for Dun & Bradstreet before
taking over a Cumberland, Maryland-based insurance agency when Macy was
nine years old. His mother, Lois, was a war widow who met Macy's father
after her first husband died in 1943; Macy describes her as a "Southern
belle".[1] Macy has a half-brother, Fred Merrill, from his mother's
first marriage.
After graduating from Allegany High School
in Cumberland, Maryland, Macy entered Bethany College of West Virginia
to study veterinary medicine. By his own admission, a "wretched
student," he transferred to Goddard College and became involved in
theatre.
It was at Goddard College that he met the
playwright David Mamet, who was only a couple of years older than Macy.
Macy later came to consider Mamet the greatest writer of our time. He
moved to Chicago, Illinois after graduating in 1971 and got a job as a
bartender to pay the rent. Within a year he and Mamet, among others,
founded the successful St. Nicholas Theater Company, where Macy
originated roles in a number of Mamet's plays, such as American Buffalo
and The Water Engine.
Career
After spending some time in Los Angeles,
California, he moved to New York in 1980. While living there he had
roles in over fifty off-Broadway and Broadway plays.
His first on-screen role was as a turtle
named Socrates in the direct to video film, The Boy Who Loved Trolls
(1984), under the name W. H. Macy.
He has appeared in films that Mamet wrote
and/or directed, such as House of Games, Things Change, Homicide,
Oleanna (playing a role he reprised after originating the role in the
play of the same name), and more recently, Wag the Dog and State and
Main.
He may be best known for his lead role in
Fargo, in a role for which he was nominated for an Academy Award and
helped shift his career into overdrive. His film work also includes
Benny & Joon, Above Suspicion, Mr. Holland's Opus, Ghosts of
Mississippi, Air Force One, Boogie Nights, Pleasantville, Gus Van Sant's
remake of Psycho, Happy, Texas, Mystery Men, Magnolia, Jurassic Park
III, Focus, Panic, Welcome to Collinwood, Seabiscuit, The Cooler, and
Sahara.
Macy has also had a number of roles on
television. In 2003, he won two Emmy Awards, for the lead role and as
co-writer of the made-for-TNT film Door to Door, a drama based on the
true story of Bill Porter, a door-to-door salesman in Portland, Oregon,
born with cerebral palsy. Macy is particularly proud of the writing for
that film; he turned the commercial-interrupted format of television
into an advantage in the film, by breaking the story up into several
uninterrupted stories.
His work on ER and Sports Night has also
been recognized with Emmy nominations. His character in ER, David
Morgenstern, is responsible for a sage piece of advice that has been
handed down throughout the series. In the pilot episode, when Juliana
Margulies' character, nurse Carol Hathaway, is brought to the hospital
with a drug overdose, Morgenstern tells Dr. Greene (Anthony Edwards)
that he needs to "set the tone" to get the unit through the difficulty
of treating one of its own. "You set the tone" is repeated several times
in the series, once jokingly by Doug Ross (George Clooney) to Greene and
at two other key moments. When Greene, dying from a brain tumor, leaves
the ER for the last time, he tells Dr. Carter (Noah Wyle), "You set the
tone, Carter." It was a moment that represented the passing of the
torch. And a few seasons later, in Carter's farewell episode, he passes
a drunk and nauseous Dr. Morris (Scott Grimes), a notoriously bumbling
character on the show, and tells him, "You set the tone, Morris." To
which, an ailing Morris replies, "What?" Carter, realizing that Morris
is, to say the least, not cut out of the mold of Morgenstern and Greene,
smiles and tells him, "Never mind."
In a November 2003 interview with USA
Today, Macy said he wants to star in a big-budget action movie "for the
money, for the security of a franchise like that."
He serves as director-in-residence at the
Atlantic Theater Company in New York, where he teaches a technique
called Practical Aesthetics. A book describing the technique, A
Practical Handbook for the Actor (ISBN 0-394-74412-8), is dedicated to
Macy and Mamet.
Personal life
Since 1997, he has been married to Academy
Award nominated actress Felicity Huffman. Their portmanteau couple
nickname, as coined by Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report, is Filliam
H. Muffman. The couple has two daughters, Sofia Grace and Georgia Grace.
They live in Los Angeles, California, and have a cabin in Vermont. Macy
is known for his liberal leanings; he and Huffman appeared at a Rally
for John Kerry in 2004. [2],[3]
He should not be confused with actor Bill
Macy, who co-starred in the television series Maude, even though some
call him Bill.
Trivia
American post-punk/pop dance band, Head
Automatica, perform a song entitled 'I Shot William H. Macy', appearing
on their 2004 album, Decadence. During their recent 2006 'Lashings of
Lucifer' tour amongst many big name bands including Taking Back Sunday
and Angels and Airwaves, upon playing this song, crowds replied with
cheers and shouts of "hang H. Macy" ala The Smiths' 1986 single,
'Panic'.
Macy recently called out the unprofessional
behaviour of actress Lindsay Lohan: "You can't show up late," Macy, 56,
told reporters Thursday at a Los Angeles junket promoting his new movie,
Everyone's Hero. "It's very, very disrespectful. I think what an actor
has to realize (is that) when you show up an hour late, 150 people have
been scrambling to cover for you," Macy told reporters Thursday. "There
is not an apology big enough in the world to have to make 150 people
scramble. It's nothing but disrespect. And Lindsay Lohan is not the only
one. A lot of actors show up late as if they're God's gift to the film.
It's inexcusable, and they should have their asses kicked." When asked
about Lohan's work on Bobby, Macy paused and said, "She was pretty
late." He added, "I worry about these young kids - 15, 18, 20 years old
- who in the span of one year become millionaires and powerhouses. It's
too much power for a kid that age to handle."
Filmography
This list is incomplete; you can help by
expanding it.
House Of Re-Animator (2008) - The President
Of The United States
Curious George (TV Series) (2006) -
Narrator
Bobby (2006) - Paul
Doogal (2006) - Brian the snail
Thank You For Smoking (2005) - Senator
Ortolan K. Finisterre
Edmond - Edmond Burke
Sahara (2005) - Admiral James Sandecker
The Wool Cap (2005) - Gigot
Spartan (2004) - Stoddard
Cellular (2004) - Mooney
Seabiscuit (2003) - Tick Tock McGlaughlin
The Cooler (2003) - Bernie Lootz
Door to Door (2002) - Bill Porter
Focus (2001) - Lawrence 'Larry' Newman
Jurassic Park III (2001) - Paul Kirby
Panic (2000) as Alex
State and Main (2000) - Walt Price
Magnolia (1999) - Quiz Kid Donnie Smith
Mystery Men (1999) - The Shoveller
Happy, Texas (1999) - Sheriff Chappy Dent
The Con (1998) - Bobby Sommerdinger
A Civil Action (1998) - James Gordon
Psycho (1998) - Milton Arbogast
Pleasantville (1998) - George Parker
Wag the Dog (1997) - CIA Agent Charles
Young
Boogie Nights (1997) - Little Bill
Air Force One (1997) - Major Caldwell
Ghosts of Mississippi (1996) - Charlie
Crisco
Down Periscope (1996) - Commander Carl Knox
(USS Orlando)
Fargo (1996) - Jerry Lundegaard
Mr. Holland's Opus (1995) - Vice Principal
Gene Wolters
ER (1994-1998) - Dr. David Morgenstern
Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993) -
Tunafish Father
Benny & Joon (1993) - Randy Burch
The Boy Who Loved Trolls (1984) - Socrates
- under the name W.H. Macy
****
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URL of Original Article:
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Date Article Copied:
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