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Michael Ironside

Michael Ironside
Michael Ironside December 2009 (cropped).jpg
Ironside in December 2009
Born Frederick Reginald Ironside
(1950-02-12) February 12, 1950 (age 67)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Nationality Canadian
Occupation Actor, voice actor, producer, screenwriter, director, editor, playwright
Years active 1977–present
Spouse(s) Karen Dinwiddie (m. 1986)

Frederick Reginald Ironside (born February 12, 1950) is a Canadian actor best known by his stage name Michael Ironside. He has worked as a voice actor, producer, film director, and screenwriter in movie and television series in various Canadian and American productions. He is best known for playing villains and "tough guy" heroes, though he has also portrayed sympathetic characters. Ironside is a method actor, who stays in character between filming scenes.

Ironside was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Robert Walter Ironside and Patricia June (Passmore). His father was a street lighting technician and laborer and his mother a housewife. He is of English, Irish and Scottish descent, and is one of five children. Ironside attended the Ontario College of Art in Toronto and at age fifteen wrote a play, The Shelter, which won the first prize in a university contest. He also won the Senior writing award at Riverdale Collegiate Institute in 1967.

In a January 2010 interview, Ironside stated in response to a question about his many roles in science fiction films that he has always been a big fan of science fiction and often received science fiction short story collections from his grandfather that he kept in a shoebox under his bed. He stated that his favourite science fiction novels are Dune by Frank Herbert and "anything involving adventure."

Ironside specializes in playing villains and tough-guys. One of his first roles was as evil telepath Darryl Revok in Scanners (1981), an early film by David Cronenberg. He played the role of a serial killer (Colt Hawker) in a 1982 slasher film directed by Jean-Claude Lord called Visiting Hours. He appeared as "Miler Crane" in The A-Team episode "Taxicab Wars" (1983). His breakthrough role was as cynical anti-hero Ham Tyler in the television miniseries V: The Final Battle (1984). He is also known for his roles in Top Gun (1986) as Naval Aviator Lieutenant Commander Rick 'Jester' Heatherly, Extreme Prejudice (1987) as Major Paul Hackett, Watchers (1988) as a conscience-free mutant assassin, and Total Recall (1990) as Richter, the murderous henchman of Ronny Cox's villain Cohaagen. Ironside played the villainous General Katana in the science fiction sequel Highlander II: The Quickening (1991) and, after a brief stint in ERs inaugural season, he was tapped to replace Roy Scheider as captain of the high-tech submarine seaQuest in the third season of seaQuest DSV as Captain Oliver Hudson. However, NBC cancelled the series after only thirteen episodes with Ironside as the star. In 1992, he starred as M. Emmet Walsh's brother in David Winning's thriller Killer Image. In 1997, Ironside was reunited with Total Recall director Paul Verhoeven for Starship Troopers. He appeared in The Perfect Storm (2000) and The Machinist (2004). He starred in the film Chaindance as a small-time crook, unable to make it on the outside, who was paired up with a handicapped man. Ironside recently starred as Resistance General Ashdown in Terminator Salvation, reunited with his co-star from The Machinist, Christian Bale.


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