Thomas F. Wilson

Thomas F. Wilson
Wilson at Helium Comedy Club in Portland, Oregon on July 16, 2011
Born	Thomas Francis Wilson, Jr. (1959-04-15) April 15, 1959 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
Other names	Tom Wilson
Occupation	Actor, stand-up comedian, voice actor, writer, musician, painter
Years active	1983–present
Spouse(s)	Caroline Thomas (m. 1985)
Children	4

Thomas Francis Wilson Jr. (born April 15, 1959) is an American actor, writer, musician, painter, voice-over artist, comedian, and podcaster. He is known for his voice-over work in video games, movies and TV shows. He is also known for playing Biff Tannen, Griff Tannen and Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen in the Back to the Future trilogy, and Coach Ben Fredricks on NBC's Freaks and Geeks.

Early life

Wilson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and raised in nearby Wayne, Pennsylvania. While attending Radnor High School, he was involved in dramatic arts; was president of the debate team, where his partner was future New York Times columnist David Brooks; and played tuba in the high school band and was drum major of his marching band. He studied international politics at Arizona State University.

Wilson attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. While in New York, he got his first "real" stage experience as a comedian.

Career

In the early 1980s, Wilson moved to Los Angeles to further pursue his career. He shared an apartment with fellow aspiring comedians Andrew Dice Clay and Yakov Smirnoff, and later joked that he "taught them both about America."^[1]

Wilson had a small role in the second season of NBC's Knight Rider in an episode titled "A Knight In Shining Armor".

His breakthrough role was as the villain, bully Biff Tannen, in the 1985 film Back to the Future. When Back to the Future became a trilogy, he was asked to perform in these sequels again as Biff's grandson Griff Tannen and Biff's great-grandfather Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen. His famous catchphrases include: "Hello! Hello! Anybody home? Think, McFly, think!",^[2] "What are you looking at, Butthead?", "Say hi to your mom for me", and "Why don't you make like a tree; and get outta here". In every Back to the Future film, he always ended up in a pile of manure (in reality, a pile of decayed sphagnum and other plant matters) when trying to kill or hurt Michael J. Fox's character Marty McFly. He reprised his role as Biff and voiced various Tannen relatives in the animated series.

He did not reprise his role as Biff Tannen in Lego Dimensions, Nor any members of the Tannen family likely due to being unavailable. He was replaced by Liam O'Brien.

Wilson played the role of a Detroit police officer in the 1988 film Action Jackson.

In 1992, he voiced gangster Tony Zucco in Batman: The Animated Series and police detective Matt Bluestone in the animated series Gargoyles. He later went to co-star in Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, a video game with Mark Hamill. It was the third chapter in the Wing Commander series, but the first to feature live action and was extremely popular at the time. The character played by Wilson was Major Todd "Maniac" Marshall, a fellow starfighter pilot of Hamill's character. Wilson also starred in the sequels Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (1995) and Wing Commander: Prophecy (1997) and contributed his voice to the animated series Wing Commander Academy (1996) in the same role. He also guest starred in an episode of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in 1997.

Wilson played McKinley High School's Coach Ben Fredricks in the 1999–2000 NBC comedy-drama Freaks and Geeks. Coach Fredricks dated Bill Haverchuck's mother. Wilson was briefly reunited with his Back to the Future co-star Christopher Lloyd in the 1994 film Camp Nowhere.

Wilson also played Simon, Hilda's dream date made out of dough, in Sabrina the Teenage Witch in 1996.

Wilson has done a bit of voice-over work for the acclaimed Nickelodeon TV show SpongeBob SquarePants. He has voiced particular villainous characters that are physically strong and/or menacing, such as Flatz the Flounder in the second season episode The Bully, and The Strangler in SpongeBob meets The Strangler, and the non-villainous character Reg the Club Bouncer in No Weenies Allowed.

In 2003, Wilson appeared on the screen in a mockumentary movie called Trial and Error: The Making of Sequestered. Wilson has often lent his voice to animated productions such as Batman: The Animated Series (1993), The New Batman Adventures (1998), Max Steel (2000), Disney's Atlantis: Milo's Return (2003), and The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004). As well as the animated roles, he has continued to voice characters in computer and video games. He had supporting roles in the film Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector and the TV drama Ghost Whisperer.

In 2004, Wilson played the role of Noah Curry in the Pasadena Playhouse production of the musical 110 in the Shade, also starring Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley. In 2005, Wilson released his comedy album, Tom Wilson Is Funny!.

In 2007, Wilson appeared in the episode "Whatever It Takes" of the drama series House M.D. as Lou, the father of Dr. House's patient.

In 2008, Wilson appeared in the episode "The Baby in the Bough" of another Fox drama, Bones. He played Chip Barnett, owner of a tire recycling plant.

Wilson appeared in an episode of the ABC drama Boston Legal (Season 4, Episode 7), "Attack of the Xenophobes", as a former police officer who is charged with murder.

Wilson performed "Sleigh Ride" with Relient K on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, playing acoustic guitar. The members of Relient K are fans of Wilson and invited him to perform on the show with them.

In March 2009, he appeared as himself, busking, in Vidiotic, a comedy pilot on the British channel BBC Three.^[3]

He has hosted a podcast, Big Pop Fun, on the Nerdist Network starting in November 2011. The podcast features Tom sharing stories of his career, as well as informal chats with showbusiness friends including Samm Levine, Blake Clark, Steve Oedekerk, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and more.

He also voiced Commander Bhoenn, Elz Organa, Gele'ren, Hutt Cartel Slaver, Jatta Kuum, Orrick Gwyndon and Rowan Delk in the 2011 massively multiplayer online role-playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic.

He is also voiced Electro in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Rok-Ko in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, Bucket in Dragons: Riders of Berk and Crewman Rick Biessman in Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force.

He also provided Additional voices for The Pink Panther.

He is uncredited as he also provided Additional voices for Boris and Natasha: The Movie.

He also played Coach Fitzgerald in The Ranch.

He is a contributor to The Bob & Tom Show and is part of their comedy tour.

Personal life

Wilson is an Irish American^[4]

Wilson is a painter.^[5] Many of his paintings focus on classic children's toys. In 2006, he was selected to join the California Featured Artist Series at Disneyland.^[6]

Wilson is a Catholic, and released a Contemporary Christian album in 2000 called In the Name of the Father.^[7]

With the rise in popularity of the Back to the Future series, many people began to ask him questions about his experiences making the films. Wilson found the repetitive nature of the questions to be so amusing and annoying that he wrote a song about them titled "Biff's Question Song" which he now features regularly in his stand-up routine.^[8]

Filmography

Film

Television

Video games

References

External links

• Official website
• Thomas F. Wilson at the Internet Movie Database
• Thomas F. Wilson at AllMovie
• Konbini - Interview (2016)