Robert Culp
| Ngày sinh: | 16-08-1930 |
| Tuổi: | 94 |
| Quốc tịch: | USA |
| Đia chỉ: |
Tiểu sử
Tall, slim and exceedingly good-looking American leading man Robert
Culp, a former cartoonist in his teen years, appeared off-Broadway in
the 1950s before settling into polished, clean-cut film leads and
"other man" supports a decade later. Hitting the popular TV boards in
the hip, racially ground-breaking espionage program
I Spy (1965), he made a slick (but
never smarmy), sardonic name for himself during his over five-decade
career with his sly humor, casual banter and tongue-in-cheek sexiness.
Though he had the requisite looks and smooth, manly appeal (not to
mention acting talent) for superstardom, a cool but cynical and
somewhat detached persona may have prevented him from attaining it
full-out.He was born Robert Martin Culp on August 16, 1930, in Oakland
California. The son of attorney Crozie Culp and his wife, Bethel
Collins, who was employed at a Berkeley chemical company, he offset his
only-child loneliness by playacting in local theater productions. Culp
also showed a talent for art while young and earned money as a
cartoonist for Bay Area magazines and newspapers in high school, but
the fascination with becoming an actor proved much stronger. He
attended Berkeley High School and graduated in 1947. The
athletically-inclined Culp dominated at track and field events and, as
a result, earned athletic scholarships to six different universities.
He selected the relatively minor College of the Pacific in Stockton,
California primarily because of its active theater department.
Transferring to various other colleges of higher learning (including
San Francisco State in 1949), he never earned a degree. After
performing in some theatre in the San Francisco area, he moved to
Seattle and then New York in 1951.Studying under famed teacher
Herbert Berghof and supporting himself
during this time teaching speech and phonetics, Bob eventually found
work on the theatre scene, making his 1953 Broadway debut (as Robert M.
Culp) in "The Prescott Proposals" with
Katharine Cornell. He eventually
returned to Broadway with "Diary of a Scoundrel" starring
Blanche Yurka and
Roddy McDowall in 1956 and with a strong
role in "A Clearing in the Woods" (alongside
Kim Stanley) a year later. He earned
an off-Broadway Obie Award for his very fine work in "He Who Gets
Slapped" in 1956, and also appeared in the plays "Daily Life" and
"Easter".Gracing a few live-TV dramas during his New York days, he returned to
his native California for his first major TV role. It was an auspicious
one as post-Civil War Texas Ranger "Hoby Gilman" in the western series
Trackdown (1957). He earned
widespread attention in the series that based many of its stories from
actual Texas Ranger files, and the show itself received the official
approval not only of the Rangers themselves but by the State of Texas.
The series led to a CBS spin-off of its own:
Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958),
which made a TV star out of
Steve McQueen.From there, Culp guested on a number of series dramas:
Bonanza (1959),
The Rifleman (1958),
Rawhide (1959),
The Detectives (1959),
Ben Casey (1961),
The Outer Limits (1963),
Naked City (1958) and
Combat! (1962). He also starred in
the two-part Disney family-styled program "Sammy the Way Out Seal"
(1962), which was subsequently released as a feature in Europe. He and
Patricia Barry played the hapless
parents of precocious Bill Mumy and
Michael McGreevey whose "adopted" pet
animal unleashes major chaos in their suburban neighborhood.During this time, Bob began to seek lead and supporting work in films.
Despite his co-starring with
Cliff Robertson,
Rod Taylor and the very perky
Jane Fonda (as her straight-laced boyfriend)
in the sparkling Broadway-based sexcapade
Sunday in New York (1963);
playing Robertson's naval mate in the popular
John F. Kennedy biopic
PT 109 (1963); recreating the legendary
"Wild Bill" Hickok in the western tale
The Raiders (1963); and heading up
the adventurous cast of the Ivan Tors' African
yarn Rhino! (1964) (which included
Harry Guardino and the very fetching
British import Shirley Eaton), Culp wasn't
able to make a serious dent in the medium.TV remained his best arena and gave him more lucrative offers,
professionally. It rewarded him quite richly in 1965 with the debonair
series lead "Kelly Robinson", a jet-setting, pro-circuit tennis player
who leads a double life as an international secret agent in
I Spy (1965). Running three seasons,
Culp co-starred with fellow secret agent
Bill Cosby, who, as "Alexander Scott", posed
as Culp's tennis trainer. The role was tailor-made for the suave,
Ivy-League-looking actor. He looked effortlessly cool posing in
sunglasses amid the posh continental settings and remained handsomely
unflinching in the face of danger. It was the first U.S. prime-time
network drama to feature an African-American actor in a full-out
starring role and the relationship between the two meshed perfectly and
charismatically on screen. Both were nominated for acting Emmys in all
three of its seasons, with Cosby coming out the victor each time.
Filmed on location in such cities as Hong Kong, Acapulco and Tokyo,
Culp also wrote and directed certain episodes of the show He also met
his third wife, the gorgeous Eurasian actress
France Nuyen, while on the set. They
married in 1967 but divorced three years later. At this stage, the
actor already had four children (by second wife, sometime actress
Nancy Ashe).Following the series' demise, Culp took on perhaps his most-famous and
controversial film role as
Natalie Wood's husband "Bob" in the
titillating but ultimately teasing "flower power" era film
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969),
with Elliott Gould and
Dyan Cannon as the other-half couple who
examine the late 60s "free love" idea of wife-swapping. The film was
nominated for four Academy Awards (two went to supporting actors Gould
and Cannon). The movie did not reignite Culp's popularity on the large
screen, but it did lead to his rather strange pairing with buxom
Raquel Welch in the violent-edged western
Hannie Caulder (1971) and a
reunion with his I Spy (1965) pal Cosby
in the far-more entertaining
Hickey & Boggs (1972), which
reestablished their great tongue-in-cheek rapport as two weary-eyed
private eyes. Culp also directed the film while his real-life wife,
actress Sheila Sullivan, played
his screen wife as well.The late 1970s produced a flood of routine mini-movies and B-pictures,
the latter including
Inside Out (1975),
Sky Riders (1976),
Breaking Point (1976),
The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday (1976),
Flood (1976),
Goldengirl (1979) and
Hot Rod (1979). While he
remained a sturdy and standard presence in such mini-movies as
Houston, We've Got a Problem (1974),
Spectre (1977) and
Calendar Girl Murders (1984),
his better TV-movie roles were in
A Cold Night's Death (1973),
Outrage (1973),
A Cry for Help (1975)
and as "Lyle Pettyjohn" in the acclaimed mini-series sequel
Roots: The Next Generations (1979).Bob returned to series TV as stern FBI Special Agent "Bill Maxwell", whose job
was to work with handsome
William Katt, who starred as an ersatz
The Greatest American Hero (1981).
The show lasted three seasons. Other series guest spots, both comedic
and dramatic, included Hotel (1983),
Highway to Heaven (1984),
The Golden Girls (1985) and
an episode of his old buddy's show
The Cosby Show (1984). He was
also a guest murderer in three of the "Columbo" episodes. Although he
was relegated to appearing in such film fodder as
Turk 182 (1985),
Big Bad Mama II (1987) and
Pucker Up and Bark Like a Dog (1989),
the 1990s offered him one of his best film roles in years as the
ill-fated President in the
Denzel Washington/Julia Roberts
political thriller
The Pelican Brief (1993). A
year later, he again reteamed with Cosby in the TV-movie
I Spy Returns (1994).Culp became very active in the 1960s Civil Rights movement and later
became a prominent face in local civic causes, joining in a lawsuit to
cease construction of an elephant exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo and
accusing officials there of mistreatment. In the long run, however, the
construction was given the green light. Culp also married a fifth time
to Candace Faulkner and, by her, had daughter
Samantha Culp in 1982. Older sons
Jason Culp (born 1961) and
Joseph Culp (born 1963) became actors, while
another son, Joshua Culp (born 1958),
entered the visual effects field. Daughter Rachel, an outré clothing
designer for rock stars, was born in 1964.In later years, Culp could be seen occasionally as
Ray Romano's father-in-law on the
hugely popular
Everybody Loves Raymond (1996).
His last film, the family drama
The Assignment (2010), was
unreleased at the time of his death. On March 24, 2010, the 79-year-old
Culp collapsed from an apparent heart attack while walking near the
lower entrance to Runyon Canyon Park, a popular hiking area in the
Hollywood Hills. Found by a hiker, Culp was transported to a nearby
hospital where he died from the head injuries he sustained in the fall.
Five grandchildren also survive.
Culp, a former cartoonist in his teen years, appeared off-Broadway in
the 1950s before settling into polished, clean-cut film leads and
"other man" supports a decade later. Hitting the popular TV boards in
the hip, racially ground-breaking espionage program
I Spy (1965), he made a slick (but
never smarmy), sardonic name for himself during his over five-decade
career with his sly humor, casual banter and tongue-in-cheek sexiness.
Though he had the requisite looks and smooth, manly appeal (not to
mention acting talent) for superstardom, a cool but cynical and
somewhat detached persona may have prevented him from attaining it
full-out.He was born Robert Martin Culp on August 16, 1930, in Oakland
California. The son of attorney Crozie Culp and his wife, Bethel
Collins, who was employed at a Berkeley chemical company, he offset his
only-child loneliness by playacting in local theater productions. Culp
also showed a talent for art while young and earned money as a
cartoonist for Bay Area magazines and newspapers in high school, but
the fascination with becoming an actor proved much stronger. He
attended Berkeley High School and graduated in 1947. The
athletically-inclined Culp dominated at track and field events and, as
a result, earned athletic scholarships to six different universities.
He selected the relatively minor College of the Pacific in Stockton,
California primarily because of its active theater department.
Transferring to various other colleges of higher learning (including
San Francisco State in 1949), he never earned a degree. After
performing in some theatre in the San Francisco area, he moved to
Seattle and then New York in 1951.Studying under famed teacher
Herbert Berghof and supporting himself
during this time teaching speech and phonetics, Bob eventually found
work on the theatre scene, making his 1953 Broadway debut (as Robert M.
Culp) in "The Prescott Proposals" with
Katharine Cornell. He eventually
returned to Broadway with "Diary of a Scoundrel" starring
Blanche Yurka and
Roddy McDowall in 1956 and with a strong
role in "A Clearing in the Woods" (alongside
Kim Stanley) a year later. He earned
an off-Broadway Obie Award for his very fine work in "He Who Gets
Slapped" in 1956, and also appeared in the plays "Daily Life" and
"Easter".Gracing a few live-TV dramas during his New York days, he returned to
his native California for his first major TV role. It was an auspicious
one as post-Civil War Texas Ranger "Hoby Gilman" in the western series
Trackdown (1957). He earned
widespread attention in the series that based many of its stories from
actual Texas Ranger files, and the show itself received the official
approval not only of the Rangers themselves but by the State of Texas.
The series led to a CBS spin-off of its own:
Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958),
which made a TV star out of
Steve McQueen.From there, Culp guested on a number of series dramas:
Bonanza (1959),
The Rifleman (1958),
Rawhide (1959),
The Detectives (1959),
Ben Casey (1961),
The Outer Limits (1963),
Naked City (1958) and
Combat! (1962). He also starred in
the two-part Disney family-styled program "Sammy the Way Out Seal"
(1962), which was subsequently released as a feature in Europe. He and
Patricia Barry played the hapless
parents of precocious Bill Mumy and
Michael McGreevey whose "adopted" pet
animal unleashes major chaos in their suburban neighborhood.During this time, Bob began to seek lead and supporting work in films.
Despite his co-starring with
Cliff Robertson,
Rod Taylor and the very perky
Jane Fonda (as her straight-laced boyfriend)
in the sparkling Broadway-based sexcapade
Sunday in New York (1963);
playing Robertson's naval mate in the popular
John F. Kennedy biopic
PT 109 (1963); recreating the legendary
"Wild Bill" Hickok in the western tale
The Raiders (1963); and heading up
the adventurous cast of the Ivan Tors' African
yarn Rhino! (1964) (which included
Harry Guardino and the very fetching
British import Shirley Eaton), Culp wasn't
able to make a serious dent in the medium.TV remained his best arena and gave him more lucrative offers,
professionally. It rewarded him quite richly in 1965 with the debonair
series lead "Kelly Robinson", a jet-setting, pro-circuit tennis player
who leads a double life as an international secret agent in
I Spy (1965). Running three seasons,
Culp co-starred with fellow secret agent
Bill Cosby, who, as "Alexander Scott", posed
as Culp's tennis trainer. The role was tailor-made for the suave,
Ivy-League-looking actor. He looked effortlessly cool posing in
sunglasses amid the posh continental settings and remained handsomely
unflinching in the face of danger. It was the first U.S. prime-time
network drama to feature an African-American actor in a full-out
starring role and the relationship between the two meshed perfectly and
charismatically on screen. Both were nominated for acting Emmys in all
three of its seasons, with Cosby coming out the victor each time.
Filmed on location in such cities as Hong Kong, Acapulco and Tokyo,
Culp also wrote and directed certain episodes of the show He also met
his third wife, the gorgeous Eurasian actress
France Nuyen, while on the set. They
married in 1967 but divorced three years later. At this stage, the
actor already had four children (by second wife, sometime actress
Nancy Ashe).Following the series' demise, Culp took on perhaps his most-famous and
controversial film role as
Natalie Wood's husband "Bob" in the
titillating but ultimately teasing "flower power" era film
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969),
with Elliott Gould and
Dyan Cannon as the other-half couple who
examine the late 60s "free love" idea of wife-swapping. The film was
nominated for four Academy Awards (two went to supporting actors Gould
and Cannon). The movie did not reignite Culp's popularity on the large
screen, but it did lead to his rather strange pairing with buxom
Raquel Welch in the violent-edged western
Hannie Caulder (1971) and a
reunion with his I Spy (1965) pal Cosby
in the far-more entertaining
Hickey & Boggs (1972), which
reestablished their great tongue-in-cheek rapport as two weary-eyed
private eyes. Culp also directed the film while his real-life wife,
actress Sheila Sullivan, played
his screen wife as well.The late 1970s produced a flood of routine mini-movies and B-pictures,
the latter including
Inside Out (1975),
Sky Riders (1976),
Breaking Point (1976),
The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday (1976),
Flood (1976),
Goldengirl (1979) and
Hot Rod (1979). While he
remained a sturdy and standard presence in such mini-movies as
Houston, We've Got a Problem (1974),
Spectre (1977) and
Calendar Girl Murders (1984),
his better TV-movie roles were in
A Cold Night's Death (1973),
Outrage (1973),
A Cry for Help (1975)
and as "Lyle Pettyjohn" in the acclaimed mini-series sequel
Roots: The Next Generations (1979).Bob returned to series TV as stern FBI Special Agent "Bill Maxwell", whose job
was to work with handsome
William Katt, who starred as an ersatz
The Greatest American Hero (1981).
The show lasted three seasons. Other series guest spots, both comedic
and dramatic, included Hotel (1983),
Highway to Heaven (1984),
The Golden Girls (1985) and
an episode of his old buddy's show
The Cosby Show (1984). He was
also a guest murderer in three of the "Columbo" episodes. Although he
was relegated to appearing in such film fodder as
Turk 182 (1985),
Big Bad Mama II (1987) and
Pucker Up and Bark Like a Dog (1989),
the 1990s offered him one of his best film roles in years as the
ill-fated President in the
Denzel Washington/Julia Roberts
political thriller
The Pelican Brief (1993). A
year later, he again reteamed with Cosby in the TV-movie
I Spy Returns (1994).Culp became very active in the 1960s Civil Rights movement and later
became a prominent face in local civic causes, joining in a lawsuit to
cease construction of an elephant exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo and
accusing officials there of mistreatment. In the long run, however, the
construction was given the green light. Culp also married a fifth time
to Candace Faulkner and, by her, had daughter
Samantha Culp in 1982. Older sons
Jason Culp (born 1961) and
Joseph Culp (born 1963) became actors, while
another son, Joshua Culp (born 1958),
entered the visual effects field. Daughter Rachel, an outré clothing
designer for rock stars, was born in 1964.In later years, Culp could be seen occasionally as
Ray Romano's father-in-law on the
hugely popular
Everybody Loves Raymond (1996).
His last film, the family drama
The Assignment (2010), was
unreleased at the time of his death. On March 24, 2010, the 79-year-old
Culp collapsed from an apparent heart attack while walking near the
lower entrance to Runyon Canyon Park, a popular hiking area in the
Hollywood Hills. Found by a hiker, Culp was transported to a nearby
hospital where he died from the head injuries he sustained in the fall.
Five grandchildren also survive.
Gia đình
- SpousesCandace Celeste Wilson(December 31, 1981 - March 24, 2010) (his death, 1 child)Sheila Sullivan(December 25, 1971 - December 14, 1981) (divorced)France Nuyen(December 9, 1967 - November 10, 1970) (divorced)Nancy Asch(May 29, 1957 - September 22, 1966) (divorced, 4 children)Elayne Carroll(September 23, 1951 - 1956) (divorced)
- Con cái: Joseph CulpJoshua CulpJason CulpSamantha Culp
- Cha mẹ: Crozier CulpBethel Collins