Tom Hulce

Tom Hulce
Tom Hulce, December 2006
Born Thomas Edward Hulce
(1953-12-06) December 6, 1953
Detroit, Michigan, United States
Education Interlochen Arts Academy
Alma mater North Carolina School of the Arts
Occupation Actor, producer, singer
Years active 1975–present
Notable work Pinto in Animal House (1978)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Amadeus (1984)
Original voice of Quasimodo in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

Thomas Edward Hulce (/ˈhʊls/; born December 6, 1953) is an American actor, singer and theater producer. As an actor, he is best known for his role as Larry "Pinto" Kroger in Animal House (1978), his Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Amadeus (1984), and his role as Quasimodo in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Additional acting awards included four Golden Globe nominations, an Emmy Award, and a Tony Award. Hulce retired from acting in the mid-1990s to focus on stage directing and producing.[1] In 2007, he won a Tony Award as a lead producer of the Broadway musical Spring Awakening.

Early life

Hulce was born on December 6, 1953 in Detroit, Michigan. (Some sources incorrectly cite his birthplace as Whitewater, Wisconsin.)[2] The youngest of four children,[3] he was reared in Plymouth, Michigan. His mother, the former Joanna Winkleman, sang briefly with Phil Spitalny's All-Girl Orchestra, and his father, Raymond Albert Hulce, worked for the Ford Motor Company.[4][5][6] As a child, he wanted to be a singer, but he switched to acting after his voice changed in his teenage years.[7] He left home at the age of 15 and attended Interlochen Arts Academy and the North Carolina School of the Arts.[8]

Acting career

Hulce made his acting debut in 1975, playing opposite Anthony Perkins in Equus on Broadway. Throughout the rest of the 1970s and the early 1980s, he worked primarily as a theater actor,[9] taking occasional parts in movies. His first film role was in the James Dean-influenced film September 30, 1955 in 1977. His next movie role was as freshman student Lawrence "Pinto" Kroger in the classic comedy Animal House (1978). In 1983, he played a gunshot victim in the television show St. Elsewhere.

In the early 1980s, Hulce was chosen over intense competition (which included David Bowie, Mikhail Baryshnikov[3] and Kenneth Branagh[10]) to play the role of Mozart in director Miloš Forman's film version of Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus. In 1984, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, losing to his co-star, F. Murray Abraham. In his acceptance speech, Abraham paid tribute to his co-star, saying, "There's only one thing that's missing for me tonight, and that is to have Tom Hulce standing by my side."

In 1989, he received his second Best Actor Golden Globe Award nomination for a critically acclaimed performance[11] as an intellectually challenged garbage collector in the 1988 movie Dominick and Eugene. He played supporting roles in Parenthood (1989), Fearless (1993) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994). In 1988, he played the title part in the British-Dutch movie Shadow Man, directed by the Polish director Piotr Andrejew.

In 1990, he was nominated for his first Emmy Award for his performance as the 1960s civil rights activist Michael Schwerner in the 1990 TV-movie Murder in Mississippi. He starred as Joseph Stalin's projectionist in Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky's 1991 film The Inner Circle. In 1996, he won an Emmy Award for his role as a pediatrician in a television-movie version of the Wendy Wasserstein play The Heidi Chronicles, starring Jamie Lee Curtis. Also that same year, he was cast in Disney's animated film adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, where he provided both the speaking and singing voice of the protagonist Quasimodo. Although Hulce largely retired from acting in the mid-1990s, he had bit parts in the recent movies Jumper (2008) and Stranger Than Fiction (2006).

Hulce remained active in theater throughout his entire acting career. In addition to Equus, he also appeared in Broadway productions of A Memory of Two Mondays and A Few Good Men, for which he was a Tony Award nominee in 1990. In the mid-1980s, he appeared in two different productions of playwright Larry Kramer's early AIDS-era drama The Normal Heart.[12] In 1992, he starred in a Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Hamlet.[13] His regional theatre credits include Eastern Standard at the Seattle Repertory Theatre[9] and Nothing Sacred at the Mark Taper Forum, both in 1988.[14]

Career as producer

Hulce produced two major projects: the six-hour, two-evening stage adaptation of John Irving's The Cider House Rules; and Talking Heads, a festival of Alan Bennett's one-man plays that won six Obie Awards, a Drama Desk Award, a special Outer Critics Circle Award, and a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play.[15] He also headed 10 Million Miles, a musical project by Keith Bunin and Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter Patty Griffin, that premiered in Spring 2007 at the Atlantic Theater Company.

Hulce was a lead producer of the Broadway hit Spring Awakening, which won eight Tony Awards in 2007, including one for Best Musical. He is also a lead producer of a stage adaptation of the Green Day album American Idiot. The musical had its world premiere in Berkeley, California, at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2009 and opened on Broadway in April 2010. He also produced the 2004 movie A Home at the End of the World, based upon Michael Cunningham's novel.

Awards and nominations

Theater awards:[16][17]

  • 2010 Tony Award Best Musical American Idiot [nominee] Produced by Tom Hulce
  • 2010 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Musical American Idiot [nominee] Produced by Tom Hulce
  • 2007 Tony Award Best Musical Spring Awakening [winner] Produced by Tom Hulce
  • 2007 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Musical Spring Awakening [winner] Produced by Tom Hulce
  • 2003 Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play Tom Hulce [nominee] (for Talking Heads)
  • 2000 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Director of a Play Thomas Hulce [nominee] (for "The Cider House Rules, Part One")
  • 1993 Helen Hayes Award Outstanding Lead Actor, Resident Play [nominee] (for Hamlet, The Shakespeare Theatre)
  • 1990 Tony Award Best Actor in Play [nominee] (for A Few Good Men)
  • 1990 Helen Hayes Award Outstanding Lead Actor, Non-Resident Play [nominee] (for A Few Good Men)

Film/Television awards

See Filmography below

Filmography

Title Year Role Notes
Forget-Me-Not-Lane 1975 Young Frank Television film
Song of Myself 1976 Brother Television film
September 30, 1955 1977 Hanley
Animal House 1978 Lawrence "Larry" Kroger, aka "Pinto"
Those Lips, Those Eyes 1980 Artie Shoemaker
Amadeus 1984 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The Rise and Rise of Daniel Rocket 1986 Daniel Rocket
Echo Park 1986 Jonathan
Slam Dance 1987 C.C. Drood
Dominick and Eugene 1988 Dominick "Nicky" Luciano Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama
Shadow Man 1988 Shadowman/David Rubenstin
Parenthood 1989 Larry Buckman
Murder in Mississippi 1990 Mickey Schwerner Television film
The Inner Circle 1991 Ivan Sanshin
Fearless 1993 Brillstein
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein 1994 Henry Clerval
Wings of Courage 1994 Antoine de Saint Exupéry
The Heidi Chronicles 1995 Peter Patrone Television film
The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1996 Quasimodo Voice
Nominated — Annie Award for Best Achievement in Voice Acting
The Hunchback of Notre Dame II 2002 Quasimodo Voice
Direct-to-DVD
A Home at the End of the World 2004 Producer
Stranger Than Fiction 2006 Dr. Cayly
Jumper 2008 Mr. Bowker
The Seagull 2018 Producer

References

  1. ↑ Producer Hulce Springs to New Rialto Role Variety, December 3, 2006
  2. ↑ Where Have You Been, Tom Hulce? Pittsburgh Tribune, August 13, 2004
  3. 1 2 With Amadeus, Tom Hulce Finds His Career Crescendoing People, December 10, 1984
  4. ↑ "The New Netherland Ancestors of Thomas Edward Hulce". Freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com. July 27, 2002. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  5. ↑ "William Holden, Patrick Swayze, and Tom Hulce: their cousinship with Jean Margaret (Kennedy) Mitchelson through the Betts family". Cybrary.uwinnipeg.ca. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  6. ↑ "Playing Ordinary Man Difficult for Hulce", Charlotte Observer, December 11, 1988.
  7. ↑ Amadeus Reinvents Himself, Playbill, December 5, 2006.
  8. ↑ Hulce Found His Calling in Ann Arbor's Theater Community. Detroit Free Press, April 18, 2010.
  9. 1 2 "Tom Hulce at". Filmreference.com. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  10. ↑ Branagh, Kenneth (1990). Beginning. New York: Norton. pp. 105–109. ISBN 978-0-393-02862-1. OCLC 20669813.
  11. ↑ amctv.com. "AMC Movie Guide". Movies.amctv.com. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  12. ↑ The Heart of the Matter Archived December 28, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. Gay Times, July 1986
  13. ↑ "Hamlet," Hulce & the Issue of Character The Washington Post, November 23, 1992
  14. ↑ "Regional Theater Finds a Winner: 'Nothing Sacred' Is the Play of the Year Although It's Never Received the Broadway Stamp of Approval". Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1988.
  15. ↑ http://www.playbill.com/article/talking-heads-off-broadways-acclaimed-alan-bennett-fest-ends-sept-7-com-114785
  16. ↑ The Broadway League. "Internet Broadway Database". Ibdb.com. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  17. ↑ Username: *. "Washington Theatre Guide | TheatreWashington | Helen Hayes Awards | Your Ticket to Washington Theatre". Helenhayes.org. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  • Tom Hulce at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
  • Tom Hulce at the Internet Broadway Database
  • Tom Hulce on IMDb
  • "Tom Hulce at Filmreference.com". Retrieved July 11, 2010.
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