Tom Berenger: Biography
Tom Berenger was born May 31, 1949 in Chicago as Thomas Michael Moore. He graduated from Rich East High School in Park Forest Illinois in 1967, where he played football. He also participated in plays with the Spanish National Honor Society.
After High School, he attended the University of Missouri as a journalism major with hopes of becoming a sports writer. He was cast in a stage production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and his career path was changed forever.
Berenger did stints in local regional theatre repertory before coming to New York City in the mid 70’s. He studied acting in New York while appearing in an adaptation of Tennessee William's The Rose Tattoo at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Connecticut. He also toured with the Milwaukee Repertory Company through Japan in A Streetcar Named Desire. He made a most interesting film debut as the psychotic pretty boy in Looking For Mr. Goodbar (1977). Soap fans will remember Tom as the second Timmy Siegal on One Life To Live.
Tom Berenger: Career
University of Missouri graduate Tom Berenger began his theater work in regional repertory. Once he hit New York, he was employed in several TV soap operas, most prominently as the ill-fated Timmy Siegel on One Life to Live. His first film acting ranged from the grittier urban demands of Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) to the cavalier heroics of Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979). After such relatively sympathetic assignments as The Big Chill in 1983, Berenger followed in the role of the sociopathic, battle-scarred Sergeant Barnes in Platoon (1986), a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. This did not, however, stop the versatile actor from trying future good-guy roles like the irresponsible baseball player in Major League (1988). Berenger continued to successfully fluctuate between heroes and villains into the '90s, with a few side trips into television, notably in an amusing, unheralded guest stint in the waning days of the sitcom Cheers. In 1998, he gave a particularly good portrayal of a villainous low life in Robert Altman's adaptation of John Grisham's The Gingerbread Man.
Tom Berenger: Films
Arthur Hailey's Detective (2005), Sniper 3 (2004), The Junction Boys (2002), Sniper 2 (2002), Eye See You (2002), Cruel and Unusual (2001), The Hollywood Sign (2001), Johnson County War (2001), True Blue (2001), Training Day (2001), Cutaway (2000), Track Down (2000), Diplomatic Siege (1999), In the Company of Spies (1999), Turbulence 2: Fear of Flying (1999), One Man's Hero (1999), A Murder of Crows (1998), The Big Chill (1998), An Occasional Hell (1996), The Substitute (1996), Body Language (1995), Last of the Dogmen (1995), Chasers (1994), Major League II (1994), Gettysburg (1993), Sliver (1993), Sniper (1993), At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991), Shattered (1991), The Field (1990), Love at Large (1990), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Major League (1989),
Last Rites (1988), Betrayed (1988), Shoot to Kill (1988), Someone to Watch Over Me (1987), If Tomorrow Comes (1986), Platoon (1986), Rustler's Rhapsody (1985), Fear City (1985), The Big Chill (1983), Eddie and the Cruisers (1983), Beyond Obsession (1982), Dogs of War (1981), Butch and Sundance - The Early Days (1979), In Praise of Older Women (1978), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Sentinel (1977), Rush It
