Celebrity Biographies
john heard
He had had surgery on his back a few days before. John Heard was found dead in his hotel room on July 21. A few months before, his son Max had died, at just 22 years old.
In the cinephile’s memory , John Heard remains indelibly recorded as Kevin’s father in the two very popular and endearing Christmas movies Home Alone . But behind him there are many roles, accumulated throughout a career of more than 40 years, in film and television, usually small, but where his powerful presence stood out. Not in vain, and despite the fact that the roles entrusted to him had few minutes of screen presence, he achieved an Emmy nomination for his detective Vin Makazian in The Sopranos . He was the typical good professional, who always did what was entrusted to him well, but who was not destined to become a star.
John Heard was born in Washington in 1945, his father was a government official, and his mother was an amateur actress, without a doubt it was thanks to her that he headed down the acting path. Like so many, his first acting jobs were off-Broadway. He would make his film debut at the end of the 70s, with a leading role, in Al otro lado de la noticia , a dramedy located in the world of underground journalism. The 1980s and 1990s were full of work, almost always in secondary roles, but in many cases in prestige titles such as Jo, What a Night ( Martin Scorsese , 1985), Return to Bountiful ( Peter Masterson , 1985), A place called Miracle(Robert Redford, 1988), Big ( Penny Marshall , 1988) and The Trail of Betrayal ( Costa-Gavras , 1988).
1990 was the year of Home Alone ( Chris Columbus ), where he was the father of that boy who dazzled the public when he stayed home alone in the middle of Christmas, and had to face some thieves. He would reprise the role in the 1992 sequel.
Meanwhile, work on punchy titles continued, and Heard’s face was recognizable to any moviegoer. There were Awakenings (Penny Marshall, 1990), The Force of Illusion ( Richard Donner , 1992), The Waterland ( Stephen Gyllenhaal , 1992), In the Line of Fire ( Wolfgang Petersen , 1993), The Pelican Brief ( Joel Schumacher , 1993), Before and After ( Barbet Schroeder , 1996), and Snake Eyes ( Brian De Palma , 1998).
Although he would continue to work assiduously until his death, with the new millennium the movies he was in were not as relevant. Although he made up for it with his television work, where his aforementioned work on The Sopranos stands out , in addition to the fact that he went through CSI: Miami and Prison Break . In any case, his compositions on the small screen were not of regular characters, but of those who could prolong his presence over several episodes.
In his personal life, Heard had a lightning marriage with actress Margot Kidder , it only lasted ten days. He spent time with actress Melissa Leo , with whom he had a son. From his second wife, Sharon, he had two children, one the prematurely deceased and aforementioned Max.