Kevin Anderson

KEVIN ANDERSON has been a Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble member for 35 years. He recently wrapped up the world premiere production of Tracy Letts's "THE MINUTES", a scathing political satire, directed by Tracy's longtime collaborator "AUGUST OSAGE COUNTY" director Anna Shapiro, and co-starring fellow ensemble member and "CSI" star William Petersen. A highly anticipated Broadway production is slated for this coming fall of 2018. Kevin has enjoyed an enduring, distinguished career which spans the breadth of almost four decades. In that time, his stellar performances on stage and on screen have left lasting impressions with his audiences. An actor's actor and respected by his peers as one whose body of work exemplifies highly trained and accomplished talent, Kevin is regarded as one who holds his own both on stage and on screen opposite the biggest stars in the world. He is recognized for going toe to toe with some of the entertainment industry's most accomplished and established actors including Julia Roberts, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Naomi Watts, Angela Basset, Michelle Pfeiffer, Patty LuPone, Jessica Chastain, Albert Finney, Jessica Lange, Vanessa Redgrave, and Richard Gere to name a few. He has also worked with some of the most iconic film and stage directors of our time including Alan J. Pakula, Norman Jewison, Mike Figgis, Phillip Kaufman, Sir Peter Hall, Trevor Nunn, Gary Sinise, Robert Falls, Anna Shapiro, and the indomitable composer Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber. Anderson made his feature film debut in the Warner Brothers hit "RISKY BUSINESS" with Tom Cruise yet his real career breakthrough and first big break came with Steppenwolf Theatre's "Orphans" (Joseph Jefferson Award). Kevin gained national critical acclaim for his riveting performance in which he played the show-stopping, frenetic, simian younger brother Phillip who lived on Star Kist tuna and Hellman's mayonnaise. The scenes between the desperate and dependent brothers Treat and Phillip became staples in every acting class across the country. This production took him all over the world from New York City's Broadway (Theatre World Award) to London's West End with Albert Finney to the Hollywood movie starring Finney and Mathew Modine and directed by the late great Alan J. Pakula. From that point on, Kevin's career continued to gather speed. He starred as Richard Gere's brother in the rural family drama "MILES FROM HOME" directed by Gary Sinise, followed by Norman Jewison's "IN COUNTRY" with Bruce Willis. The hit film "SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY" in which Anderson starred opposite Julia Roberts established him as one of Hollywood's most promising young leading men. Kevin has always been drawn to compelling characters and powerful dramas. Throughout his career, he has shown exceptional range and performed in a wide variety and eclectic array of material ranging from "LIEBESTRAUM" with director Mike Figgis, "HOFFA" portraying Bobby Kennedy opposite Jack Nicholson in the title role, "RISING SUN" with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes to the romantic comedy ensemble "THE NIGHT WE NEVER MET" with Mathew Broderick and Annabella Sciorra. He has gone from musicals like "SUNSET BOULEVARD" opposite Patti Lupone in London's West End to the Julia Roberts thriller "SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY" to Tony nominated American classics on Broadway like "DEATH OF A SALESMAN", "ORPHEUS DESCENDING" with Vanessa Redgrave, and "COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA", or the "MILK TRAIN DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE" with Olympia Dukakis, to independent films at Sundance, and then on to both cable and network television. Other notable film work includes the Miramax release "FIRELIGHT" opposite French actress Sophie Marceau directed by Bill Nicholson followed by the drama "EYE OF GOD" (which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival) by actor/writer/director Tim Blake Nelson, and "A THOUSAND ACRES" opposite Michelle Pfeiffer. Some other favorite feature films include "DOE BOY" produced by Chris Eyre ("Smoke Signals"), "WHEN STRANGERS APPEAR" with Radha Mitchell, "CHARLOTTE'S WEB" in which he plays Dakota Fanning's father, and "RUBY'S BUCKET OF BLOOD", an original feature film for Showtime in which he starred as a white blues singer who falls in love with an African American "juke joint" owner (Angela Basset) in the late 1950s in the deep American South. Kevin is perhaps best known for his performance as Father Ray, the strong willed, unconventional, and maverick Catholic priest rebelling against church hypocrisy and authority in ABC's ground-breaking, prolific, and prophetic television series and cult favorite "NOTHING SACRED" for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in 1998. He also received Best Actor nominations from the Viewers for Quality Television, the Online Film and Television Association, the Television Critics Association, and a Peabody Award for the production. Other forays into television include the critically acclaimed but short-lived Jerry Bruckheimer series "SKIN" opposite Ron Silver and Olivia Wilde. Other favorite television films include "POWER AND BEAUTY" opposite the stunning Natasha Henstridge and directed by Susan Seidelman, "MONDAY NIGHT MAYHEM" with John Turturro and directed by Ernest Dickerson, and "HUNT FOR the UNICORN KILLER" (Best Actor Nomination - Online Film and Television Association) opposite Naomi Watts. Subsequent returns to the stage have been as varying as they were lauded, from the world premiere of "SUNSET BOULEVARD" in London as the original musical Joe Gillis opposite Patti LuPone, to "DEATH OF A SALESMAN" (Tony nomination, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award), to a heartbreaking turn in "I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER" with John Mahoney at Steppenwolf Theatre, to the cult hit "BROOKLYN THE MUSICAL" on Broadway with Karen Olivo, to "COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA" (Outer Critics Circle Award nomination) on Broadway with "Law and Order's" S. Epatha Merkersen and Zoe Kazan, to a hit stage production of the Stephen King epic "THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION" in the starring role of Andy Dufresne in Dublin and London's West End. He starred as John the Baptist opposite Jessica Chastain and Al Pacino in the stage production of Oscar Wilde's "SALOME" which recently was made into a documentary entitled "WILDE SALOME" directed by Pacino. Other notable Off-Broadway, London, and Chicago productions include "PAL JOEY" in the title role, "MOONCHILDREN" (Cynthia Nixon), "BRILLIANT TRACES" (Joan Cusack), "THE RED ADDRESS", "SPEAKING IN TONGUES" (Karen Allen), "SUMMER AND SMOKE" (Amanda Plummer), "DINNER WITH FRIENDS" (Samantha Bond, Elizabeth McGovern), and "EARTHLY POSSESSIONS" (Joan Allen) and "DETROIT" (Laurie Metcalfe) at Steppenwolf. Kevin is a graduate of Chicago's Goodman School of Drama and hails from Gurnee, Illinois, a small farming community bordering Wisconsin in the heart of the Midwest - a true blue cow town. As a boy, he roamed the cornfields, rivers, and forests of his home town and it is there that the values of modesty, honesty, and hard work were formed. These Midwestern values have served him well as he climbed the ladder of success, never forgetting the people and friends who helped and supported him along the way. Kevin's goals and ideals remain as steadfast today as they were as when he first started acting. Pursuing the art of acting has never been about fame and fortune for Kevin. His only desire in this world has been to be the best actor that he can possibly be. To achieve this, he realized early on that to be the best, he had to strive to work with the best material, on the most interesting, challenging, and new roles he could possibly find, and to seek to work with the most talented and inspiring directors and actors that walked the face of the planet. These same goals remain constant and true today and he is truly honored to have worked with such amazing and creative powerhouses throughout his career, most notably the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago who gave him his start. In the fall of 2010, Kevin walked in to a bank in Chicago to withdraw money from the very first bank account that he had opened when he had first started out, from his salad days and humble beginnings. The money was gone. He later painfully discovered that the money and account had been garnished by the IRS due to six to eight years of unfiled taxes that his "business manager" had agreed to be responsible for and shockingly, had acquired a $100,000 tax bill. Thus began a decade long twisting and turning nightmare in which he slowly discovered and came to believe, piece by piece, like putting together a scattered jigsaw puzzle, that his former business manager Arthur B. Greene had defrauded him of millions of dollars and also believed that the accounting firm Marks Paneth that Greene had merged with in early 2009 had helped hide the fraud. In December of 2014, having already sought help unsuccessfully from countless lawyers and unable to afford legal advocacy as he came to realize and believe that almost all of his savings had been absconded, Kevin filed a lawsuit pro se in the Federal Court in the Southern District of New York against Arthur B. Greene and Marks Paneth alleging fraud, racketeering, malpractice, and breach of fiduciary duty among other claims. Unfortunately, the judge dismissed many of these claims primarily due to statute of limitations issues. This does not mean that these crimes did not actually happen, it simply means that Kevin was too late in prosecuting the wrongdoers and bringing forth his claims in a timely fashion as the cancerous relationship with Greene had endured for almost 30 years. There is very much room for dispute on this however. Based on the legal concept the Doctrine of Estoppel, if a defendant does anything to mislead or prevent a plaintiff from learning of any malfeasance, wrongdoing, or fraud then the statute of limitations can be extended or tolled. Kevin adamantly believes that he was intentionally lied to, tricked, stalled, and misled which prevented him from learning of the alleged fraud earlier and consequently prohibited him from filing a timely claim. He wants to argue these fine points later in an appeal and hopefully reinstate the other dismissed claims which are the meat and substance of the lawsuit and claims that he filed originally in December of 2014. Remarkably, litigating the other permitted claims pro se, and all by himself, and with only a high school education, he was able to defeat a motion to dismiss on some of his other claims against two very large New York City law firms (Cohen Tauber Spievack & Wagner, and Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker) and is currently still litigating these claims in the Southern District of New York. He hopes to appeal all other dismissed claims including fraud and racketeering allegations in the future. Although this nightmare has been extremely stressful and disturbing and has literally turned his entire world upside down, it has also given him the opportunity to reexamine his life and why he got into acting in the first place, to press the reset button, and to pursue his career and dreams again with a clean slate and an open heart. It has taken a herculean effort on Kevin's part to rebuild trust after such a wounding and abusive experience, but it has also transformed him and has only made him stronger and more conscious in his pursuit of excellence and a deeply felt desire and commitment to use his talents for a greater good and to help and be of service to others. He feels it is important to let the entertainment industry know exactly why he has been off the radar for some time and that he is now back and ready to tackle this next stage of his career. If you care to read more about his case, go to Pacer, Southern District of New York, Case No. 14 CV 10249 KPF to read more on Kevin's personal views on the case and how it has affected his life.