Anthony Edwards

Anthony Edwards

Active - 1981 - 2016  |   Born - Jul 19, 1962 in Santa Barbara, California, United States  |   Genres - Drama, Romance, Family & Personal Relationships

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Biography by AllMovie

Lanky blond and balding actor Anthony Edwards' career reached a pinnacle with his role as the easy-going Dr. Green on the hit NBC television series E.R.. While his rise to fame seems sudden, the actor has been in the business since he was 12 years old. At that young age, Edwards began acting on stage. For the next five years he would act in over 30 plays before going to study at the prestigious Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1980. He also studied drama at USC, Los Angeles. While there he made his feature-film debut in Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982). Unlike many actors who are typecast into certain roles in particular genres, Edwards has remained firmly between genres, having played in everything from teen exploitation flicks (Revenge of the Nerds [1984]), and serious drama (Mr. North [1988]), to actioners (Top Gun [1986]) and thrillers (Downtown [1990]). In 1992, Edwards had a recurring and memorable role as the environmentally-hypersensitive Bubble man on the popular offbeat CBS TV show Northern Exposure.

He continued to work on ER until the show's 8th season in 2001, and co-starred Daryl Hannah and Ben Foster in the fantasy drama Northfolk in 2003. Edwards continued to find success as an actor and producer throughout the mid-2000s, and in 2007 took on the role of Inspector William Armstrong in Zodiac, director David Fincher's docudrama chronicling the gruesome story of the serial murderer known as the Zodiac killer. In 2008 he starred in The Dark Lurking, a sci-fi thriller, and starred along with Minnie Driver and Uma Thurman in the independent comedy Motherhood the following year. In 2010 he co-starred in director Rob Reiner's coming-of-age comedy Flipped.

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Factsheet

  • Acted in high-school plays with friend Eric Stoltz.
  • Breakthrough role was as Tom Cruise's ill-fated friend Goose in 1986's Top Gun.
  • Dated and lived with Meg Ryan for two years after they met on the set of Top Gun.
  • Met his wife in 1992 on the set of Pet Sematary Two, where she worked as a makeup artist.
  • Was on the verge of giving up acting in 1994 after appearing in a series of poorly received movies when writer-producer Michael Crichton invited him to audition for ER.
  • Returned for a 2008 ER episode in which his character appeared in flashbacks.
  • Active with Shoe4Africa, a New York-based charity which operates mostly in Africa. It promotes such health initiatives as AIDS awareness; he has served as chairman of its board of directors.
  • Cast as famed beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti in a film based on Jack Kerouac's novel, Big Sur.