John Victor Shea III (/ʃeɪ/SHAY;[2] born April 14, 1949)[3] is an American actor, film producer, and stage director. His career began on Broadway where he starred in Yentl, subsequently winning his first major award, the 1975 Theatre World Award. Shortly after his Off-Broadway career began, Lee Strasberg invited Shea to join the Actors Studio where he spent several years studying method acting.
Shea has been noted for his political involvement in social equity, which in 1984 led him to organize the largest peace rally in the history of the United States, garnering praise by various non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International.[citation needed] In 2014, Shea announced his directorial debut with Grey Lady, released in mid-2017.
Early life
Shea was born in North Conway, New Hampshire, near where his father was teaching at Fryeburg Academy, Maine, and was raised in the Sixteen Acres area of Springfield, Massachusetts, with four siblings. His parents were Elizabeth Mary (née Fuller) and Dr. John Victor Shea, Jr.,[5] who served in the U.S. Army during World War II, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, and who became a teacher, coach and later assistant Superintendent of Schools. Elizabeth Shea introduced John to literature, poetry, classical music, and art and urged him to study the piano.
Education
Shea attended Roman Catholic schools in Springfield, graduating from Cathedral High School, where he captained the varsity debate team and played varsity football and track. Shea studied at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, where he earned a bachelor's degree in theatre. He performed on the varsity debating and football teams and co-edited the college literary magazine, Puffed Wheat, before graduating in 1970.[1][6]
After a directing apprenticeship at both the Chelsea Theatre under Robert Kalfin and the Public Theater with Joseph Papp, he made his Broadway debut at the age of 26 in Kalfin's production of Isaac B. Singer's Yentl opposite Tovah Feldshuh, for which he received the Theatre World Award. Yentl started Off Broadway at the Chelsea Theatre Center at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and, after a favorable reception, was moved to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre by producer and Actors Studio co-founder, Cheryl Crawford, and was later made into a film starring Barbra Streisand. After seeing his performance Lee Strasberg invited Shea to join the Actors Studio where he spent several years studying method acting. Since his Broadway debut in the mid 1970s, Shea has continued to work in Off-Broadway and Broadway theatre productions, starring in Arthur Kopit's End of the World starring with Linda Hunt and Barnard Hughes. In 1977, during his first trip to Los Angeles to get experience in front of a camera, he played guest roles in such TV series as Eight Is Enough and Man from Atlantis, and co-starred in The Last Convertible, a miniseries for Universal.
In 1982, he co-hosted, with Kathryn Walker, the June 12th Anti-Nuclear Rally in Central Park, the largest peace rally in the history of the United States.[11] This rally was the subject of the 1984 documentary film In Our Hands by Robert Richer and Stan Warnow, in which Shea made a cameo appearance.[12]
In 1987 ABC contracted a network miniseries titled Baby M, in which Shea was cast.[14] His portrayal of William "Bill" Stern received critical acclaim and resulted in him being nominated and winning his first Emmy Award for Supporting Drama Actor.[15] He starred in Small Sacrifices alongside Farrah Fawcett in 1989.
In Grant Tinker's 1990 CBS series WIOU, written by John Eisendrath and Kathryn Pratt, Shea led an ensemble cast briefly before the show's cancellation.[16][17]
In 1993, Shea was cast as Lex Luthor in the television show, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.[18] His portrayal of the DC Comics supervillain received positive reviews, but he left after the first season occasionally returning in later seasons in a guest role. Shea said of the role:
This villain is written as a human being, and not just a one dimensional comic villain or a two dimensional comic villain, the way he might have been portrayed in the comic books or even other films. I thought Gene Hackman was brilliant, but it was a different kind of comic villain.[19]
His starring run of the series ended on an enjoyable note for Shea; the series finale includes a virtual reality sequence in which Luthor flies over Metropolis in a modified Superman costume. Shea recalled, "One day I read the script and I thought, 'Oh my God! I'm really going to get to do this?' And they said yes. You're going to get to fly. ... They just took me out on this boom and they flew me back and forth across the green screen. And they had wind machines blowing and smoke machines, and, oh my God, I felt like I was reborn."[20] After leaving Lois & Clark, Shea starred in a new X-Men inspired series, Mutant X, where he was cast as Adam Kane.[21] The show aired for three seasons before being cancelled.
Later in 2009 he was cast as Cary Ago's father, Jeffery, a recurring character on The Good Wife.[33] He made his debut into Indian cinema with the 2009 Tamil drama Achchamundu! Achchamundu!, directed by Indo-American film director Arun Vaidyanathan, becoming the first American actor to work in a Tamil film. The film garnered widespread praise and critical acclaim.[34][35][36]
In 2015, Shea joined the cast of Agent X as Thomas Eckhart.[42] It was announced that Shea would play Dr. Marcus Eldridge in a 2016 episode of Bones.[43]
Personal life
Shea has been married twice. He and his first wife, photographer Laura Pettibone, had one child together, Jake. He and his current wife, the artist Melissa MacLeod, a co-founder of the cooperative (X) Gallery on Nantucket, have two children, Miranda and Caiden.[44]
Shea is the Artistic Director Emeritus of the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket, where he helped produce 40 productions.[45]
Filmography
According to IMDB, Shea has been in a total of 81 movies as an actor, has written, and directed two screenplays that have turned into film (Grey Lady and Southie), and has served as an associate producer on Achchamundu! Achchamundu! as well as an executive producer on his directorial debut, Grey Lady.[3]
