Ron Silver

Born: July 1946
Where: New York City, USA

It's not many actors who can claim they avoided the Vietnam draft by travelling through Asia and Russia in the 1960s on an intelligence-gathering mission for the CIA.

Back in the USA, "special agent" Silver taught for about a year in Connecticut, before moving to New York, where he made his stage debut in 1971.

He spent the '70s acting in off-Broadway and regional productions and made his Broadway debut as a replacement in Mike Nichols' production of David Rabe's Hurlyburly.

Beginning with his part as a Spanish instructor in Tunnelvision in 1976, Silver did a number of supporting film roles - Semi-Tough, Best Friends and and finally began making an impression with good turns in Silkwood and as a bereft son in Garbo Talks.

He received widespread acclaim for his film performances as a resourceful, womanizing Holocaust survivor in Paul Mazursky's Enemies, A Love Story and as Alan Dershowitz in Reversal of Fortune.

He also played an oily villain stalking rookie cop Jamie Lee Curtis in Kathryn Bigelow's Blue Steel and during the first half of the '90s co-starred in Married to It, Billy Crystal's Mr. Saturday Night, Timecop, Spike Lee's Girl 6 and the sci-fi thriller The Arrival.

Active in many political causes, Silver is a co-founder (and first president) of the liberal advocacy group, The Creative Coalition. He was elected president of Actors' Equity Association in June, 1991.

His last major big screen role was as Angelo Dundee in Will Smith's boxing biopic Ali.