Rob Morrow

Rob Morrow

Active - 1985 - 2015  |   Born - Sep 21, 1962 in New Rochelle, New York, United States  |   Genres - Drama, Thriller, Crime

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Biography by AllMovie

One way (though perhaps not the ideal way) to describe the familiar TV persona of American Actor Rob Morrow is as a more neurotic, less loveable Woody Allen. Supporting himself as a waiter and balloon messenger in his earliest acting days, Morrow made his prime time network TV debut in 1988 as Marco on the weekly dramatic series Tattinger's. A year later, he was up for the lead in a planned series called The Antagonists, but he opted instead for a tailor-made role in the shortlived stage play The Substance of Fire. Though warned by his agent that this move would cost him any future TV work, Morrow went on to achieve fame in 1990 as Dr. Joel Fleischman, the misplaced general practictioner of Cicely, Alaska, on CBS' Northern Exposure. Two years into the series, Morrow threatened to quit if he wasn't given a substantial pay hike; but when September rolled around, Morrow was back as Dr. Fleischman. Morrow left Northern Exposure for good in 1994 (the series was obviously on its last legs anyway), but not before appearing as cigar-chomping, Boston-accented, fiercely moralistic federal attorney Richard Goodwin in Quiz Show, the 1994 film re-enactment of the 1958 TV game-show cheating scandal.

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Factsheet

  • Attended and studied acting at the renowned HB Studio in New York.
  • Helped found the New York City acting troupe Naked Angels in 1986.
  • "I did every job in my struggling days," he told People magazine in 2005. "One was delivering balloons. That was a nightmare. You'd go through revolving doors and they'd pop." Also, he said, "I was a bartender, but didn't know how to bartend. People would ask for a Grasshopper, and I'd just give them something [else]. If you put enough alcohol in, nobody cares."
  • On the Board of Directors of Project ALS.
  • Independent film Maze (2000), which he wrote, directed and co-produced, won the AFI Festival New Directions Award - Special Mention and honorable mention at the San Jose Film Festival.
  • Founded the production company Bits and Pieces Production Company.
  • Directed various TV episodes, including Oz, Street Time, Joan of Arcadia and NUMB3RS.