Celebrity Biographies
Hal Holbrook
He found glory late in his career, in the excellent film Into the Wilderness . And he did it as one would expect from his work, with a small secondary role full of humanity, which earned him an Oscar nomination, being the oldest actor at that time to compete for the statuette. The actor has passed away at the age of 95.
Thanks to his portrayal of the elderly Ron Franz in Into the Wild (2007), Hal Holbrook won the Oscar, an award that undoubtedly does justice to his great professionalism and his long career, strewn, yes, with very small roles for the cinema. and countless television appearances. That is probably the reason why we all too well recognize his kind countenance and his thin face with small eyes, and at the same time we feel unable to name even one of his movies…
Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr. was born in Cleveland (Ohio), on February 17, 1925. Therefore, he shares the year of birth with other greats of cinema, such as Robert Altman , Paul Newman , Richard Burton , Robert Mulligan , Angela Lansbury , Sammy Davis Jr. or Dorothy Malone . At the age of 22, in 1948, he graduated from Denison University, in Ohio, and in 1954 he made his first artistic work in a television series entitled The Brighter Day . The experience must not have been very satisfactory, because it took him a long time to return to the cinema, specifically with his secondary work in The Group , a film bySidney Lumet starring as Candice Bergen . In 1967 she achieved some fame with her participation in the television show Mark Twain Tonight! , for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award. Later he made appearances in low-key films, such as The President , with Shelley Winters ; Perverted Youth , with Eli Wallach ; or The Great White Hope , directed by Martin Ritt . Holbrook combined these papers with other works for series and TV movies, which little by little became his natural environment.
In the 1970s, he stood out in Suddenly Single (1971), with Margot Kidder ; in the comedy They Only Kill Their Owner (1972), with James Garner and Katharine Ross ; and above all in Pueblo (1973), a telefilm about the tribulations of a spy in North Korea. Halbrook, got the Emmy Award for Best Actor for his role as Captain Lloyd Bucher in that film and was also awarded Actor of the Year. What’s more, for his role in the excellent series, Lincoln won the Emmy again the following year. The actor continued with his few appearances in films, but each time it was more important films: Harry the Strong (1973),All the President’s Men (1976), The Battle of Midway (1976), Julia (1977) and Capricorn One (1978), among many others. During the 80s she focused his work on historical television series of unquestionable quality. Thus, he could be seen in George Washington (1984), North and South (1985), where he gave life to President Lincoln; The Fortunate Pilgrim (1988); and Emma: Queen of the South Seas (1988). Already in the last decade of the millennium she stood out in 1993 with her role as Lambert in the legal thriller The Firm (The cover) ; in the series The Perry Mason Mystery(1995), about the character created by Erle Stanley Gardner ; in Unlimited Romance (1996), alongside Dennis Hopper ; in The Bachelor (1999); and in Men of Honor (2000), with Robert de Niro .
In recent years his screen time has been less and less. This is the case of his work in The Majestic (2001), or in the series The West Wing of the White House (2001), Hope & Faith (2005) and The Sopranos (2006), where his participation has been limited at times. to a single chapter.