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Michael Beck
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Michael Beck | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | John Michael Beck Taylor |
| Born | February 4, 1949  Memphis, Tennessee |
Michael Beck (born John Michael Beck Taylor on February 4, 1949) is an American actor.
Beck was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the third of nine children. He attended Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, on a football scholarship. After graduating with a degree in Economics, he was one of 30 (out of 2,500) applicants chosen for London's Central School of Speech and Drama. Michael's stage credits, beginning with college, include: Romeo & Juliet (he was Tybalt); Camelot (he was King Arthur); and Cat On a Hot Tin Roof. Besides acting, his hobbies include reading, music and cooking.
Michael is known predominantly for his roles as as "Swan" in the action film The Warriors (1979), "Sonny Malone" in Xanadu (1980), and as "Lieutenant-Commander Dallas" in Megaforce (1982). (The Megaforce role garnered him a Razzie nomination for Worst Supporting Actor.) Beck also appeared in other movies such as Warlords of the 21st Century, The Last Ninja (film), The Golden Seal (as an evil poacher), and Wes Craven's Chiller (as a cryogenically-frozen sociopath). He starred in a short-lived television series, Houston Knights (1987), in the role of "Sgt. Levon Lundy." More recently, he starred in television shows JAG, Walker Texas Ranger in a Difficult Peace, and as the Mars-born Terrorist-turned cyborg assassin Abel Horn in the science fiction TV series Babylon 5 episode A Spider In The Web.
Michael has narrated numerous audiobooks of John Grisham's novels. He has also narrated Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz; A Darkness More Than Light by Michael Connelly; State of the Union by David Callahan; and the unabridged version of Bill Clinton's My Life. He also lent his voice to the popular video game adaptation of The Warriors (2005).
Beck lives in California with his songwriter-wife Cari (they celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in September 2005), and with their two children: daughter Ashley and son Jesse. According to Michael, neither of his kids acts or plays football.
- "The Warriors opened a lot of doors in film for me, which Xanadu then closed."
- "One rule of thumb which my parents handed down to me, and which I've handed down to my kids, is this: You won't get respect just because of a name or a title, but your name and title just might get respect because of you. It's never failed us yet."