Sean Astin
Sean Astin had starred in
ten movies, directed a short film, and formed his own production company all
before his 21st birthday. The elder son of actress
Patty Duke
and actor/director
John Astin,
he knew the hazards of Hollywood life: As a popular child star, Astin
refrained from drinking, drugs, and narcissism. He juggled acting with attending
classes at Crossroads High School for the Arts and Los Angeles Valley College,
eventually graduating cum laude from the University of California at Los Angeles
with dual degrees in History and American Literature and Culture. When his
younger brother, fellow kid actor
Mackenzie
Astin, temporarily fled Los Angeles to pursue journalism, Astin
doggedly remained in town -- he once half-heartedly considered a law career, but
could never part with being an entertainer.
Astin was born in Santa Monica, CA, on February 25,
1971. His famous parents actively supported his childhood ambition to become an
actor, and Astin was cast in TV specials, movies, and even series until
1983. Barely a year later, screenwriter
Steven
Spielberg handpicked the 13-year-old Astin to star as Michael
"Mikey" Walsh in
Richard
Donner's children's adventure film
The Goonies
(1985). Astin earned his first Young Artist Award for his work on the
film and went on to act in a host of teen pictures. He headlined the
Disney Channel television movie The B.R.A.T. Patrol (1986), joined
Kevin Bacon
for the wilderness adventure
White Water
Summer (1987), and appeared with
Dudley Moore
and Kirk
Cameron in the comedy
Like
Father, Like Son (1987).
In 1988, Astin directed his first short film, a
Vietnam picture about the unexpected relationship between an American GI and a
Viet Cong soldier titled
On My Honor.
Astin's own production company, Lava Entertainment, financed the
film. While continuing to develop projects through Lava Entertainment,
Astin starred with
Dermot
Mulroney in 1989's
Staying
Together. He won his second Young Artist Award for his performance in
the picture. Also in 1989, Astin portrayed the teenage son of feuding
couple
Kathleen Turner and
Michael
Douglas in
Danny DeVito's
The War of
the Roses. He finished off the '80s by enlisting in the all-star cast of
Michael
Caton-Jones' World War II drama Memphis
Belle (1990). The film -- which also features
Matthew
Modine,
Harry Connick Jr.,
Billy Zane,
and Eric
Stoltz -- followed the crew of the Memphis Belle bomber on their
harrowing final run over Germany. Astin's stocky build and comic timing
lent well to his incarnation as the group's tail gunner, Sergeant Richard
"Rascal" Moore. When Astin initially lost the lead role in his next
picture,
Toy Soldiers (1991), to
Wil Wheaton,
he treated the film's director, Dan Petrie Jr., to a screening of
Memphis
Belle. Petrie was so impressed by his work that he relegated
Wheaton to a supporting part and cast Astin as Toy Soldiers'
hero, a rebellious student who saves his prep school from South American
terrorists.
In the spring of 1992, Astin starred with
Pauly Shore
and Brendan
Fraser in
Encino Man,
a comedy about two California high school students who discover a
caveman. He then reunited with
Dermot
Mulroney in the drama Where the
Day Takes You (1992), which also stars
Will Smith,
Christian
Slater,
Lara Flynn Boyle, and
Ricki Lake.
1993 saw Astin play the title character in Rudy, the memorable
film about a tenacious boy determined to play football for Notre Dame despite
the fact that he is too small. Football coaches around the United States still
show the film before games to inspire their players, and, to this day, strangers
still chant "Rudy! Rudy!" when they spot Astin on the street.
After filming
Safe
Passage (1994) with
Susan
Sarandon and
Sam Shepard,
Astin appeared in the independent film
The Low
Life (1995), for which he won the Best Actor Award at the 1995 Fort
Lauderdale Film Festival. That same year, he wrote, directed, and produced
his second short film, Kangaroo Court. The picture tells the story of a
police officer who is put on trial by an inner-city gang and stars
Gregory
Hines and
Michael
O'Keefe. It earned Astin an Academy Award nomination for Best
Short Film (coincidently,
John Astin
was nominated in the same category for his film
Prelude
in 1969).
Astin continued to work steadily throughout the '90s.
In 1995, he starred in Showtime's adaptation of
Kurt
Vonnegut Jr.'s futuristic short story Harrison Bergeron. In 1996,
he made a cameo as a doomed soldier in the first feature film to depict Desert
Storm,
Edward Zwick's
Courage
Under Fire. In 1997, he directed and starred in an episode of HBO's
Perversions of Science called "Snap Ending" and was one of several
narrators in the Academy Award-winning Holocaust documentary The Long
Way Home. In 1998, Astin took a small role in
Warren
Beatty's
Bulworth
and began work on a string of independent films -- including Boy Meets Girl
(1998),
Dish Dogs (1998), Kimberly (1999),
Deterrence
(1999), and
Icebreaker (1999).
The decade also brought changes to Astin's personal
life. On July 11, 1992, he married Christine Astin (born Harrell)
at Patty
Duke's Idaho farm. The couple met when she worked at Astin's
talent agency and they co-founded Lava Entertainment together. Then, in
1994, Astin underwent DNA testing that revealed rock promoter
Michael Tell to be his biological father (Patty
Duke and Tell had been briefly married before her engagement to
John Astin).
Though the actor is friendly with Tell, he still considers those who
raised him to be his parents. Two years later, Astin and his wife had
their first child, Alexandra Louise, in November of 1996.
In the summer of 1999, Astin landed the coveted part
of portly hobbit Samwise "Sam" Gamgee in
Peter
Jackson's highly anticipated three-film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's
The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Auditions for the role were held over
several months in every English-speaking country in the world. Astin's
father had appeared in Jackson's horror film
The
Frighteners, and the veteran actor's fondness for the director made
Astin determined to get the part. When he found that his only competition
was an overweight English thespian, Astin gained 30 pounds to secure the
role. All three installments of the trilogy -- The Fellowship of the Ring
(2001), The Two Towers (2002), and
The Return
of the King (2003) -- were filmed simultaneously over an 18-month period
in New Zealand. Astin's wife and daughter accompanied him to the shoot
and Alexandra made her acting debut as a young hobbit in Sam Gamgee's
family. The couple had a second child, Elizabeth Louise, between the
release of the first and second films.
Filmography & Theater /
Gallery / Links
|