Actor / Director Profile

Charming, compactly built, extremely affable American actor Brian Edward Benben was born on June 18, 1956 in Winchester, Virginia. Deciding on an acting career while quite young, he started things out at age 17 performing in off-off-Broadway shows in New York. Such late 1970s theater works included "Wild Oats," "The Tooth of Crime," "The Overcoat," "Gossip" "A Moon for the Misbegotten" and the role of Bottom in "A Midsummer Night's Dream".During his early 20s he began to pursue TV work and made an auspicious debut on the very serious side with the infamous "The Gangster Chronicles" (1981) in which his Michael Lasker character barely disguised that of real-life mobster Meyer Lansky. He also played a gay lover in the TV-movie drama "American Playhouse: Family Business (#2.3)" (1983) starring a straight-acting Milton Berle, and then portrayed Tom Hayden, the California senator who was once convicted, along with others, of inciting riots that disrupted the 1968 Democratic National Convention, in the re-dramatization of Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8 (1987) (TV). Brian also had supporting roles which also accentuated his serious side in the feature films Clean and Sober (1988), Dark Angel (1990) and Mortal Sins (1989).Regular series work came in the late 1980s playing a chauvinistic hospital resident who felt women had no place being surgeons on the short-lived medical drama "Kay O'Brien" (1986). But it was the sexually frank sitcom "Dream On" (1990) that catapulted Brian to stardom as the self-effacing, newly-divorced book editor Martin Tupper. The cable show, which took on a whimsical, if much more hormonal, Thurber-like feel, lasted six seasons. During that run he was given a choice starring part in the film Radioland Murders (1994). Had the series been on prime-time channel (it was on Fox briefly in 1995), his star-power might have illuminated even stronger. Nevertheless, this led to his second starring sitcom role in which he used his real name to play a news co-anchor on the very aptly-titled "The Brian Benben Show" (1998) for CBS. The show, in which he was co-executive producer, had a much shorter life than "Dream On".Since then Brian has maintained amenably on TV, particularly in mini-movies. He was found mixing it up with Diane Keaton in the irreverent Sister Mary Explains It All (2001) (TV), playing at odds with William Hurt in the drama The Flamingo Rising (2001) (TV) and returning to his mob roots in the mini-series "Kingpin" (2003), this time as a morally-tormented surgeon. On stage Brian took his initial Broadway bow in "Slab Boys" alongside Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Val Kilmer.Brian has been married since 1982 to actress Madeleine Stowe, who played his wife Ruth Lasker in the "Gangster" series. The couple have two children and own a working cattle ranch in Texas.