Peter Billingsley (born April 16, 1971), also known as Peter Michaelsen[1] and Peter Billingsley-Michaelsen,[2][3] is an American actor and filmmaker. He is best known for portraying Ralphie Parker in A Christmas Story and A Christmas Story Christmas. He also played Jack Simmons in The Dirt Bike Kid, Billy in Death Valley, and Messy Marvin in a series of commercials for Hershey's Syrup in the 1980s. While an infant, he began acting in television commercials.
Early life
Peter was born in New York City. His father, Alwin Michaelsen, is a financial consultant, and his mother, Gail, was once Alwin's secretary. She is the niece of Stork Club owner Sherman Billingsley, and the cousin of Glenn Billingsley who was married to actress Barbara Billingsley.
All five of the children in the family had acting careers when they were young. The older Billingsleys, Dina and Win, had the briefest acting careers working mostly in commercials, with minor guest spots on television shows. Peter's elder sister, Melissa, is best known for her role as Maxx Davis on Me and Maxx.[4] Peter's older brother, Neil, began playing Danny Walton on the daytime soap opera Search for Tomorrow in 1975 and has had numerous roles in commercials and guest shots on TV series.
Billingsley was a spokesman for the young astronaut program and was present in 1986 at launch pad 39B (at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida) for the doomed launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger.[5]
Career
Billingsley's first acting role was when he was 2 in a 1973 Geritol commercial. He went on to star in about 120 television advertisements throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.[6] At 12 he was quoted as saying, "After 100 [commercials], you lose count."[citation needed] He was best known for a series of commercials for Hershey's chocolate syrup in which he portrayed the character Messy Marvin.[7][8] One of Billingsley's earliest film roles was in 1978's If Ever I See You Again, written and directed by Joseph Brooks.[1]
His role in 1981's Paternity opposite Burt Reynolds earned a nomination for "Best Young Comedian – Motion Picture or Television" at the Young Artist Awards.[9] In 1981, he appeared in Honky Tonk Freeway. In 1982, Billingsley starred in several features, including Death Valley, Massarati and the Brain, and the made-for-TV movie Memories Never Die with Lindsay Wagner and his sister, Melissa. He had a featured guest role as Gideon Hale on Little House on the Prairie, began a three-year stint as a co-host on NBC's popular Real People (for which he earned another Young Artist Award nomination),[9] and hosted a two-episode offshoot of the show called Real Kids.
In 1983, Billingsley starred in A Christmas Story, based on Jean Shepherd's In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, which built its audience slowly over the years and is now broadcast each year for 24 hours from Christmas Eve until Christmas Day on sister cable networks TBS and TNT. The film earned Billingsley another Young Artist Award nomination, and is arguably the one role with which he is most associated. He has been quoted as saying that people still approach him on the street, only to say "you'll shoot your eye out, kid!"[9] After about 40 years, he reprised the role in a sequel film titled A Christmas Story Christmas directed by Clay Kaytis for HBO Max.[10]
The early 1990s had Billingsley tackling older roles such as a would-be athlete who gets hooked on steroids in the CBS Schoolbreak SpecialThe Fourth Man. On the project he formed a close friendship with Vince Vaughn.[15] His next Schoolbreak Special appearance was in The Writing on the Wall (1994), starring Hal Linden as a rabbi who teaches three boys about the horrors of intolerance after they are caught defacing his home, temple, and car with swastikas and antisemiticgraffiti. Billingsley was nominated for an Emmy Award for the role.[9][16]
Other work
The most notable of his later film acting assignments was Arcade (1993), in which he starred as a teenaged "virtual reality" addict; he worked as the postproduction supervisor (credited as Peter Michaelsen). He began working behind the scenes more often. Known as Peter Michaelsen, he was assistant editor on Knights, a film which featured Kris Kristofferson. In 1994, he starred in, wrote, and directed (credited as Peter Billingsley) the short film The Sacred Fire, and credited as Peter Michaelsen as the executive producer. The film won an Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films' Golden Scroll Award.[1]
His career behind the scenes continued, including work on The Discovery Channel's A.R.K.: The New Adventures of Animal Rescue Kids, The X Show, Made, and Elf, in which he has a cameo appearance.
In 2001, he was nominated for an Emmy Award as co-executive producer for the show Dinner for Five. In 2005, he helped produce the movie Zathura. He was an executive producer for the Universal Pictures production The Break-Up in which he had a small acting role (as Andrew), appearing alongside frequent collaborator Jon Favreau.[17] Billingsley served as executive producer on director Favreau's Iron Man feature film; he also acted in the film playing William Ginter Riva, a scientist who works for Obadiah Stane; he reprised the role later in 2019 in the film Spider-Man: Far From Home.[18]
Billingsley, Favreau, and Vaughn appeared in Four Christmases (2008). Couples Retreat (2009) starring Favreau and Vaughn was Billingsley's first major film as director and was followed by his second directorial effort Term Life, which also starred Vaughn.[1]
Billingsley's acting career continues, as well, with roles in Family Reunion: A Relative Nightmare, Elf, L.A. Heat, and No Deposit, No Return, which was voted Best Feature Film at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival in 2000.[19] He took an acting part in an experimental film for the new Maxivision 48 projection system which was developed by Dean Goodhill.[20]
Billingsley released a CD titled Christmas Stories...Christmas Songs on Run For Cover Records in 1999 with longtime friend Brian Evans.[21] He signed on as executive producer of a musical adaptation of A Christmas Story that opened in Seattle in December 2010. He said he was "honored to be a part of this project and looks forward to bringing the play to more stages... Just think about the idea of a leg-lamp kickline."[22]
Personal life
Billingsley married Elizabeth "Buffy" Bains in 2015, with whom he has two children.[23][24]
^"Corporate Inquiry". Corporations Division. Arizona Corporation Commission. September 28, 2007. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. Retrieved April 2, 2014.
^"Entity Information". ecorp.azcc.gov. Arizona Corporations Commission. Retrieved March 12, 2023.
