Tim Robbins

Born: 16 October 1958
Where: West Covina, California

Tim Robbins and his wife Susan Sarandon are as well known for their left-wing political stance as their acting success.

But a Best Actor Oscar nod for his role opposite Sean Penn in Mystic River has secured his best known part as a Hollywood icon.

Robbins, whose childhood dream was to play baseball for the New York Mets, ended up working with the avant garde Theatre for the New City.

Following his graduation from UCLA in 1981, he co-founded The Actors' Gang (serving as artistic director until 1997) a politically vocal theatre group.

Robbins made his TV debut in 1983, opposite Helen Hunt in the movie Quarterback Princess, and landed a small role in a Martin Scorsese-directed episode of Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories entitled Mirror, Mirror.

Following his feature film debut in 1984, in No Small Affair, he gave a memorable performance in Rob Reiner's The Sure Thing, before showing up on the periphery of the blockbuster Top Gun.

A year later, he starred with John Cusack as a reluctant video director for Tapeheads, a picture which marked his first songwriting credit.

That same year, he portrayed the dim-witted fast-ball pitcher Nuke Laloosh innocent coached by Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham.

Robbins met Sarandon at the audition in Los Angeles and within a year they were married.

Robbins played a Vietnam veteran in Jacob's Ladder, a racist boss in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, and made a killer seem sympathetic in Robert Altman's The Player.

His deceptively wicked performance earned best actor awards from both Cannes and the Golden Globes.

Starring in his feature directorial/screenwriting debut, Bob Roberts, he portrayed a right-wing, folk-singing senatorial candidate.

As co-presenters at the Oscars in 1993 they defied convention by using the platform to bring attention to the plight of Haitian refugees with Aids.

It was as the unjustly jailed victim in The Shawshank Redemption opposite Morgan Freeman that bought him great praise for his exquisitely modulated performance.

Chaos, the production company Robbins formed in 1993 released its first production in 1995 with the death penalty drama Dead Man Walking.

Acting continued with Robert Altman's disappointing Pret A Porter and the forceful Arlington Road.

Robbins starred as the President in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and also appeared in movies as diverse as Mission to Mars and comedy drama High Fidelity.

He also had turns as a shady US spook in Jonathan Demme's The Truth About Charlie and anti-big business movie Anti-Trust.

He was Oscar-nominated for his role as the abused father in Clint Eastwood's Mystic River and played a futuristic detective who falls in love with Samantha Morton in Code 46.

Recent work includes the role of a creepy survivalist in Spielberg's big budget adaptation of HG Wells' War of the Worlds.