Boyd Kestner on AllMovie

Boyishly handsome in a Rob Lowe sort of way, Boyd Kestner's career in front of the camera gained increasing momentum in the early to mid-'90s with roles in such television series as The Outsiders and Knot's Landing, eventually resulting in a feature career that pointed to great things ahead in the early years of the new millennium. A Manassas, VA, native who fell into acting after relocating to New York City, Kestner didn't find his true calling until laboring as a bartender among legions of aspiring actors. Prompted by his peers to take acting classes, and soon thereafter embarking on a seemingly endless series of auditions, Kestner finally got his break when he landed a role in the short-lived television series The Outsiders. Later toiling in made-for-television movies and minor film roles, fate once again smiled on Kestner when he landed his first major film role in director Ridley Scott's G.I. Jane (1997). The first in a series of minor roles in such major Hollywood films as The General's Daughter (1999) and Hannibal (2001, again with director Scott), Kestner's role as a houseguest who wears out his welcome in the psychosexual thriller Cleopatra's Second Husband (1998) earned him critical kudos and found him climbing the credit rungs. Taking his menacing act on the road for Snakeskin (2001) found Kestner establishing himself as an actor with the ability to maintain a curiously enigmatic screen presence, with roles in Scott's Black Hawk Down (also 2001) and the affectionate 2002 comedy-drama Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood coinciding with a relocation to the West Coast and pointing to a promising future.