Ron Perlman

Born: 13 April 1950
Where: New York, USA

The familiar face of many a movie monster, Perlman is best known for his sardonic portrayal of shorn-horned superhero Hellboy.

He is also an in-demand voiceover artist supplying the vocals for characters as diverse as Slade in Teen Titans and Clayface in Batman.

The son of a council worker mother and a jazz drummer and repair man father, Perlman attended George Washington High School.

He obtained a degree in theatre arts from New York's Lehman College and a masters from the University of Minnesota before volunteering as an actor with the Young Storytellers Program.

Equally at home as a villain or in sympathetic roles, Perlman began his acting career in the 70s working extensively on stage in New York and the East Coast of America (he also tried his hand at stand-up).

He broke into features in 1982 with Quest for Fire but, lacking conventional looks, proved somewhat difficult to cast and his career was slow to take off.

He was one of the monks under suspicion of murder in The Name of the Rose in 1986 but is perhaps best remembered in the US as the tragic half-human, half-animal Vincent in the 1987 TV series Beauty and the Beast.

Having played Pap Finn to Elijah Wood's Huck in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Perlman got the chance to camp it up as a Russian mobster in the farcical Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow in 1994.

But he was better suited in his next role as the circus strongman - his first leading role - as the gargantuan oaf One in The City of Lost Children.

Extensive work in TV movies followed and Perlman found his niche providing voices for animated series like The Legend of Prince Valiant, The Adventures of Batman and Robin, Aladdin, Iron Man (he voiced The Hulk) and many others, including the feature film Titan AE.

The late '90s and new millennium saw a resurgence in his career with appearances in hits such as Alien: Resurrection, Enemy at the Gates, Blade II and Star Trek: Nemesis. He finally got another leading film role in 2004 when he fought off the challenge of Vin Diesel played the title role in the comic book adaptation Hellboy.

Director Guillermo del Toro, who worked with him previously on Cronos and Blade II, had to fight to secure the role, as the studio wanted someone more well-known.

Perlman reprised his role as Hellboy in Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.