Adrian Pasdar

Adrian Pasdar
Pasdar at ComicCon, July 2008
Born	(1965-04-30) April 30, 1965 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, United States
Occupation	Actor and film director
Years active	1986–present
Spouse(s)	Natalie Maines (2000–present)
Children	2

Adrian Pasdar (born April 30, 1965) is an American actor, voice artist, and film director. He is known for playing Jim Profit on the TV series Profit, for his roles in Near Dark, Carlito's Way, Mysterious Ways and as Nathan Petrelli on Heroes. Additionally, he directed the feature film Cement. Pasdar is the voice of Iron Man in Marvel Anime, as well as in the animated series, Ultimate Spider-Man and Avengers Assemble.^[1] He also played Alec Rybak, district attorney on The Lying Game.

Early years

Pasdar was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His father, Homayoon Pasdar, was an Iranian American immigrant and cardiac surgeon, with a practice near Philadelphia. His mother, Rosemarie (née Sbresny),^[2] was born in Königsberg/Kaliningrad, a city that was part of Germany until 1945, and is now a part of Russia. She worked as a nurse before becoming an English teacher and travel agent in France.^[3]

Pasdar graduated from Marple Newtown Senior High School in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, and received a football scholarship to the University of Florida to play linebacker.^[4] 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, at which time he had to finish his freshman year while undergoing intensive physical therapy.

He has a younger sister, Anamarie "Pink" Pasdar, who is also an actor.^[5]

Acting career

Pasdar turned his attention to campus stage productions and rediscovered an early 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. There he worked on sound and lighting as part of the stage crew responsible for set construction. He had a painful accident on the set, cutting off the end of his left thumb. His resulting medical compensation paid for attendance at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in New York City.

Pasdar was also selected to play a bit part as a police officer in the Dixie Chicks video for their song, "Goodbye Earl". The music video won both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association's Video of the Year Awards in 2000.

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 cult vampire movie Near Dark (1987), with Pasdar in the lead role of Caleb Colton. Other major roles include Vital Signs (1990). Pasdar got his biggest break in movies, when he starred as a beautiful woman opposite Julie Walters in the British movie Just Like a Woman. 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).

Adrian Pasdar wrote and directed the short film Beyond Belief and directed his first feature film, the art-house neo-noir Cement, a contemporary re-telling of Othello, in 1999. The $1.7 million independent feature, which won Best Picture awards on the festival circuit, starred Chris Penn, Jeffrey Wright, Sherilyn Fenn, Henry Czerny and was written by Farscape's screenwriter Justin Monjo. "I've used every ounce of energy and every drop of money I had to make Cement," Pasdar said.^[6]

Television

Pasdar's major break into television came in 1996, when he was cast as the title character on the short-lived but critically acclaimed Fox series Profit. He also guest starred in the 2 hour season finale of the fourth season of Touched by an Angel, "The Spirit of Liberty Moon". 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 2003 through 2005. In 2006, he had a high-profile guest role as Gabrielle Solis's sleazy lawyer in Desperate Housewives.

He starred as Nathan Petrelli in the NBC superhero drama Heroes. Pasdar based his mysterious character on "the most morally liquid characters" that he's encountered in his life. The character is not based on one particular political figure, but on a melange of different ones, both good and bad.^[7] Pasdar's character was killed off in an episode that aired November 30, 2009.^[8]

Pasdar voices Hawkeye in the animated series The Super Hero Squad Show and voiced Captain America in the Black Panther animated series. Having also voiced Iron Man in the English dub of the Iron Man anime series, Pasdar reprises the role in Marvel's Avengers Assemble, Ultimate Spider-man, and Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H..^[9]

Pasdar also played a role on The Lying Game as Alec Rybak, a corrupt district attorney. He currently plays the recurring role of Glenn Talbot on the Marvel TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and Nolan Burgess on the Colony (TV series) . He also starred in the one season screened Amazon Studios series The After.^[10]

Personal life

Pasdar married Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in June 2000. The couple first met in May 1999, with Maines as a bridesmaid to her bandmate Emily Robison and Pasdar as a groomsman to his friend 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 sons, Jackson Slade Pasdar (born March 15, 2001) and Beckett Finn Pasdar (born July 14, 2004) and live in Los Angeles, California and Austin, Texas.

He has a tattoo of an anchor on his arm. His children's names are written on it. It symbolizes that his family is his anchor and support in life.^[11] He also has a tattoo of the Chinese character for Strength, which he got while filming Shanghai 1920.^[11]

Pasdar is a guitarist for charity rock band Band from TV. Part of the proceeds from the band's concerts go to his nominated charity, the Rush Epilepsy Center.^[12]

Awards and nominations

Award Wins for Acting

• 2009: Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films: Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor in Television, Heroes^[13]

Award Wins for Directing

• 2000: AngelCiti film festival: Audience Award, Cement

Other Award Wins

• 2009 (ensemble): Hollywood Note Foundation's Change the World Awards, Humanitarian Award of Inspiration: Band From TV^[14]

Filmography (as actor)

Filmography (as director)

Audiobook narration

In 2010, Pasdar narrated an audiobook edition of the cult novel Queer Fish in God's Waiting Room by the British writer Lee Henshaw. It was released in early 2011.^[17]

Further reading

See also

• Iranian American

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Adrian Pasdar.

• Adrian Pasdar at the Internet Movie Database