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Kevin Delaney Kline (born October 24, 1947) is an Academy Award- and Tony Award-winning American stage and film actor. Kevin Kline became established as one of the most versatile and talented stage actors of his generation in the 1970s and 80s. Proving equally at home in musical comedy, contemporary drama and the classics, he has delighted and thrilled New York audiences with his performances. His feature career, despite winning an Oscar, has proven more dicey. Kline has demonstrated his capabilities and invoked comparisons with such diverse screen icons as Errol Flynn and Laurence Olivier, yet he has also acquired a reputation for discretion and selectivity (he is jokingly referred to as 'Kevin Decline'), creating a body of work that, while impressive, has not propelled him to the front ranks of stardom. Kline was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Peggy Delaney and Robert Joseph Kline, who was a classical music buff and a singer, and owned and operated The Record Bar, the largest toy and record store in St. Louis. His father's family also owned Kline's Inc., a department store chain. Kline has described his mother as the "dramatic theatrical character in our family". Kline has two younger brothers, Alex and Christopher, and an older sister, Kate. A charismatic leading man with rakish dark matinee idol looks, Kline was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri and began acting in school plays. He studied composing and conducting at Indiana University for two years before finally switching to drama. While an undergraduate, Kline co-founded a theater troupe, The Vest Pocket Players, that specialized in topical satirical revues. Upon graduation, he headed to New York City and landed bit roles in the New York Shakespeare Festival productions of "Henry VI, Parts I and II" and "Richard III" before being accepted into the newly established drama division of Juilliard, founded by John Houseman. Kline's father was an Agnostic of German Jewish descent and his Irish American mother, the daughter of an immigrant from County Louth, was Catholic. Kline was raised in his mother's faith and graduated from the Catholic Saint Louis Priory School in 1965. He attended Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where he began as an aspiring classical pianist, but after joining the on-campus theater group "Vest Pocket Players" as an undergraduate, he fell in love with the theater and switched to acting, graduating from IU in 1970. In 1972, Kline and other members of the first graduating class (including Patti LuPone and David Ogden Stiers) became founding members of The Acting Company. For the next several years, the troupe traveled throughout the USA appearing in works ranging from "The School for Scandal" to "Three Sisters" to "Measure for Measure.” Kline made his Broadway debut with The Acting Company in "Scapin" in 1973 and two years later originated his first musical role, Jamie Lockhart, in "The Robber Bridegroom.” In 1970, Kline was awarded a scholarship to the newly formed Drama Division at the Juilliard School in New York. In 1972, he joined with fellow Juilliard graduates, including Patti Lupone and David Ogden Stiers, and formed the City Center Acting Company (now The Acting Company), under the aegis of famed British actor John Houseman. The Company traveled across the U.S. performing Shakespeare's plays, other classical works, and the musical The Robber Bridegroom, founding a dedication and mission unparalleled in American repertory theatre. In 1976, Kline left The Acting Company and settled in New York City, doing a brief stint as the character "Woody Reed" in the now-defunct soap opera Search for Tomorrow. He followed this with a return to the stage 1978 in the small role of "Bruce Granit", a matinée idol caricature, in Hal Prince's On The Twentieth Century, for which he won his first Tony Award. In 1981, Kline paired up with rock diva Linda Ronstadt and singer Rex Smith in the New York Shakespeare Festival's Central Park production of The Pirates of Penzance, winning another Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical, for his comically dashing portrayal of the Pirate King. He later played the role in a film version of the musical, also with Ronstadt and Smith, which had a limited theatrical release. While understudying Raul Julia's MacHeath in the acclaimed New York Shakespeare Festival revival of "The Threepenny Opera,” he was cast in the supporting role of egocentric movie star Bruce Granit in "On the Twentieth Century.” Kline's physical agility, comic flourishes and strong singing nearly stole the show and earned him a 1978 Featured Actor Tony Award. He followed with a dramatic turn in Michael Weller's "Loose Ends" (1979), opposite Christine Lahti. In 1980-81, Kline delighted audiences as the swashbuckling Pirate King in an irreverent staging of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance,” for which he earned a second Tony Award. He has subsequently distinguished himself in Shakespearean roles ranging from a dastardly "Richard III" (1983) to a dashing "Henry V" (1984) to a sly Benedick in "Much Ado About Nothing" (1988) to two outings as the Melancholy Dane in "Hamlet" (1986 and 1990; he also directed the latter). He co-starred with Raul Julia and Glenne Headley in a revival of Shaw's "Arms and the Man" (1985), directed by John Malkovich. In the ensuing years, Kline appeared many times in New York Shakespeare Festival productions of Shakespeare, including starring roles in Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, two productions of Hamlet (one of which he also directed) and a Tony-nominated Falstaff in a production that combined the two parts of Shakespeare's Henry IV. Dubbed "the American Olivier" by New York Times theater critic Frank Rich for his stage acting, Kline finally ventured into film in 1982, winning the coveted role of the tormented and mercurial Nathan opposite Meryl Streep in Alan Pakula's Sophie's Choice. Streep won an Academy Award for her performance in the film, and Kline was nominated for a Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for best debut performance. During the 1980s and early-1990s, Kline made several films with director Lawrence Kasdan, including The Big Chill, Silverado, Grand Canyon, I Love You To Death, and French Kiss. In the mid-1990s, he was supposed to star as Mandrake the Magician in the movie of the same name, but the film never got off the ground. In 1989, Kline won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the British comedy A Fish Called Wanda, in which he played a caricature of a painfully stupid American ex-CIA thug opposite John Cleese's genteel British barrister and Jamie Lee Curtis' femme fatale/con woman. In 2000, the American Film Institute ranked the film twenty-first on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs. Kline made an impressive screen debut as a charismatic schizophrenic opposite Streep in "Sophie's Choice" (1982). Over the next several decades, he has etched several memorable characters, including the definitive post-radical, young suburban professional in Lawrence Kasdan's "The Big Chill" (1983), a revisionist Western hero in Kasdan's "Silverado" (1985) and an Oscar-winning turn as perhaps the most stupid hit man ever in "A Fish Called Wanda" (1988). Teamed with Sally Field, Kline shone as a second-rate "serious" actor reduced to starring on daytime TV in "Soapdish" (1991) and then offered an effective cameo as Douglas Fairbanks in the 1992 Richard Attenborough-directed biopic, "Chaplin.” He proved effective in the dual roles of the US President and his doppelganger in the excellent comedy "Dave" (1993). While "Fierce Creatures" (1997) reunited Kline with his "Fish Called Wanda" co-stars and offered another chance to play dual characters, an Australian media baron and his scheming American son, the film was uneven and lacked the comic spark that made "Wanda" a success. Kline fared better as a Midwestern high school teacher who is "outed" as gay by a former student accepting a movie award in the box-office hit "In & Out" and as a cheating husband facing the changing times in 1973 in the superlative drama "The Ice Storm" (both 1997). Though he was not in a film for all of 1998, Kline was named Man of the Year by Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Club. Though he has been offered many roles that could have boosted him to box-office stardom, Kline has kept a wary distance from the Hollywood star-making machine and developed a reputation for picking parts with discrimination (such as strong roles in Grand Canyon and Life as a House), leading to the industry moniker "Kevin Decline". Other awards have included Drama Desk Awards, Golden Globe awards, a Gotham Award, a Hasty Pudding Theatricals Man of the Year Award, and a St. Louis International Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award. He also has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Film reviewers have widely praised his talent. Newsday said Kline "has proved himself to be one of the most talented and versatile American actors of his generation." But critics, mostly college-age reviewers, do occasionally appear, like the University of Texas newspaper writer that said his portrayal of a police officer in "Trade" was "half-hearted and horrific", and the young blogger that said Kline's Hamlet was comically overblown. Through the vagaries of working in film, the actor managed to have high profile roles in two major 1999 releases. In Michael Hoffman's restaging of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream,” Kline very nearly stole the film as the comical Bottom, while in Barry Sonnenfeld's version of the 60s TV series "Wild Wild West", he stepped into the late Ross Martin's shoes as the master of disguise Artemus Gordon alongside Will Smith (as Jim West) but was overshadowed by the overblown production values and done in by the poor script. 2001 once again saw Kline in two different projects: in "The Anniversary Party,” he played a slightly hammy, aging actor married to a former actress, while in "Life as a House", the actor offered an excellent performance as a dying man struggling to reach his disaffected teenage son. In 2002, Kline had a small but meaningful role in the surprise comedy hit "Orange County" and starred as a professor in the feature drama "The Emperor's Club," a variation on the "Dead Poets Society" formula. He turned in an extremely winning performance as the elegant, complicated songwriter Cole Porter in the biopic "De-Lovely" (2004), which focused on the bisexual composer's relationship with his devoted wife and muse (Ashley Judd). Despite these fine portrayals, there has been something curiously lacking in Kline's film career. On stage, he can be dynamic and fluid, while on screen he sometimes appears muted and constrained (e.g., "The January Man" 1989; "Consenting Adults" 1992). While demonstrating a facility with comic accents (i.e., Kasdan's "I Love You to Death" 1990 and "French Kiss" 1995), the overall effect calls attention to itself. With few exceptions (notably Meryl Streep in "Sophie's Choice" and Sigourney Weaver in both "Dave" and "The Ice Storm"), Kline does not strike romantic sparks with his leading ladies in the way he has on stage. In fact, one of his best romantic roles was as Pheobus in Disney's animated "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1996). On stage, Kline has earned his most positive reviews, particularly for the lead in Anton Chekhov’s “Ivanov” in 1997, performed at New York City’s Lincoln Center. In 2000, he gave a strong performance as the obsessive-compulsive writer, Trigorin, in another of Chekhov’s major plays, “The Seagull,” which starred Meryl Streep, Jonathan Goodman, Natalie Portman, and was directed by Mike Nichols. He then gave a bravura—though understated—performance as the plump Jack Falstaff in Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, part 1” in 2003. After making a cameo appearance in Martin Short’s mediocre “Jiminy Glick in LaLaWood” (2005), a would-be spoof on Hollywood that starred Short as an annoying, third-rate entertainment reporter trying to boost his career, Kline took on the role of Chief Dreyfus in “The Pink Panther” (2006), starring Steve Martin as the bumbling inspector once essayed brilliantly by Peter Sellers. In early 2006, he was honored with the dubious distinction of having an award named after himthe Kevin Kline Award™ which recognized outstanding achievement in theater throughout the Greater St. Louis area. The 1st Annual Kevin Kline Awards were held on March 20, 2006 at the newly revamped Robert’s Orpheum Theatre with a typically jovial Kline was on hand to open the ceremony. Meanwhile, he joined the ensemble cast for Robert Altman’s fictional take on Garrison Keillor’s radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion” (2006), playing an inept private detective trying to save the showwhich is about to be canceledfrom disaster. He then returned to Shakespeare for the screen, playing the hopelessly melancholy Jacques in “As You Like It” (lensed 2005). Most recently, he played the title role in King Lear at the Public Theatre, and has played the lead role in a Broadway production of Cyrano de Bergerac opposite Jennifer Garner, although that production was forced to temporarily close after only eleven performances as a result of the Broadway stagehands strike. Cyrano, however, is reportedly currently being filmed for showing on PBS later in 2008. On January 27, 2008, Kline won a Screen Actors Guild award for his portrayal of Jaques in Kenneth Branagh's film As You Like It, adapted from Shakespeare's play. The film premiered theatrically in 2006 in Europe, but bypassed theatres and was sent straight to HBO in the U.S., where it was shown on August 21, 2007. In December 2004 Kline became the 2,272nd recipient of a star on Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 7000 Hollywood Blvd. Kline married actress Phoebe Cates, 16 years his junior, in 1989. The couple make their home in New York City and have two children: Owen Joseph Kline (born 1991), who had a featured role in The Squid and the Whale, and Greta Simone Kline (born 1994). Reports of the existence of a third child, a girl named “Autumn Belle Kline,” are merely apocryphal. She is never mentioned in any legitimate sources, interviews, etc. After his son was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, Kline became active with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. In November 2004, he was presented with the JDRF's Humanitarian of the Year award by Meryl Streep for his volunteer efforts on behalf of the organization. The Kevin Kline Awards honor theater professionals in St. Louis in a wide array of categories, which include best actor and actress, set design, choreography, and original play. The first awards ceremony took place on March 20, 2006. |
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