Actor / Director Profile

Matt Craven was born Matthew John Crnkovich to parents Nick Crnkovich and Joanne Leslie in the small Canadian town of Port Colborne, Ontario, on November 10, 1956. After his father died, six weeks after his birth, Matt's mother moved Matt and his two-year-old sister Debbie to her hometown of St. Catharines, Ontario, where Matt essentially spent his youth. An accomplished athlete, he lived for playing hockey in the winters and baseball in the summers. Matt was an excellent student, and his freshman year of high school looked promising--he was the starting running back on the football team and was achieving better-than-average grades. However, that summer his mother's hairdressing business started to falter. By the middle of Matt's sophomore year, she was about to declare bankruptcy. Matt decided to leave school to help with the situation facing the family and although he thought it would be just a year, he never went back. The jobs he took over the next few years included working as a fireman and oiler on ships sailing the Great Lakes. After driving truck for a plumbing company and working maintenance for an electrical company, Matt's mom's business was back on its feet and Matt headed west to Edmonton, Alberta. He worked for the next two years as a lineman for the Canadian National Railway as a member of a troubleshooting crew fixing telecommunication lines across three provinces. In 1975, after giving notice, Matt and a friend headed to Europe with all their savings. Three months later and completely broke, he returned from Europe with no job prospects and a questionable future staring him in the face. Just when things started to look their most depressing, Matt came across an ad in the local paper, announcing auditions being held the next day for the upcoming local production of Dracula. After calling the number and getting the information for the audition the next day, Matt decided to go to the theater that night to see what he might be getting himself into. He left the theater knowing that he had found his life's work. Although he never auditioned for anything at all before in his life, he got the part of Jonathan Harker in Niagara Falls Music Theatre's production of Dracula. He moved to Toronto after the production closed to pursue the art of acting. His first job as an actor was a supporting role in the movie Meatballs (1979) and was followed up by starring in the short film Bravery in the Field (1979), which was nominated for an Academy Award. He then went about learning the craft of acting, originating roles in new plays and finding parts in local CBC television productions. In 1982 he moved to New York City, driven by his love of the stage and originating new works. He brought his favorite Canadian play with him, The Crackwalker, and after making his mark in the off-Broadway theater scene in the runaway hit Blue Window, finally produced and starred in the play Crackwalker at the Hudson Guild Theater. It wasn't long before Matt was landing good parts in film and television. He has received critical acclaim in many films and television performances but regards his two children as his most important accomplishments.