Terry O'Quinn

TerryTerry O'Quinn (born July 15, 1952) is an American actor, most famous for playingJohn Locke on the TV series Lost. He made his debut in a 1980 television movie calledF.D.R.: The Last Year. Since then, O'Quinn has had minor supporting roles in films and TV movies such as Young Guns, All the Right Moves, Silver Bullet, Places in the Heart,Between Two Women, and The Rocketeer, in which he portrayed Howard Hughes. O'Quinn has had guest roles on TV shows such asMiami Vice, The Twilight Zone, Tales of the Unexpected, The West Wing, Star Trek: The Next Generation, JAG, Remington Steele, The X Files,Alias, Falling Skies, and the 2010 version ofHawaii Five-0. He starred in the ABC supernatural drama series 666 Park Avenue.[1]

O'Quinn became known for playing the title role in The Stepfather and Stepfather II and was cast in 1996 as Peter Watts in Millennium, which ran for three seasons (1996–1999). In 2004, he finally broke into mainstream popularity after landing the role of John Locke on the ABC TV series Lost, for which he won an Emmy Award in 2007 (and was nominated in 2005 and 2010) and a Saturn Award in 2004.

Early life
O'Quinn was born as Terrance Quinn at War Memorial Hospital in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, one of 11 siblings, and grew up in nearby Newberry, Michigan. He is of Irishdescent, and was raised Roman Catholic.[2][3]He attended Central Michigan University inMount Pleasant, Michigan, and the University of Iowa in Iowa City. He changed his surname from Quinn to O'Quinn as another registered actor already had the name Terrance Quinn .[4]

In the 1970s he came to Baltimore to act in the Baltimore regional theater play Tartuffe. He was cast in his first movie role Heaven's Gate, but it required horse riding. O'Quinn took riding lessons from Lori Binkley at Wood Gait Farm in northwest Baltimore County. He took on the role of Captain Minardi in Heaven's Gate, a Western that starred a slew of big names like Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, Jeff Bridges and John Hurt. The movie failed, and is one of the biggest box-office bombs of all time: grossing $3 million on a $44 million budget. However out of the experience O'Quinn married Lori in 1979. They have sons Oliver and Hunter. They raised their boys in Reisterstown before selling the house and moving to Hawai'i in 2004.[5] In 2013, The Baltimore Sun reported that O'Quinn was spotted at a Towson, Maryland, bagel store called Towson Hot Bagels where he told people in the store that he now lives in Timonium, Maryland.[6]

Career
Terry began acting in the 1970s during his time at Central Michigan University. He not only was an outstanding actor but also playwright/director. He wrote and directed the musical Orchestrina. This musical featured five main characters: The Man (played by Jeff Daniels), The Boy (Harold Downs), The Woman (Ann O'Donnell), The Girl (Debbie Penwarden), and The Drunk (James Hilliker), plus a female and a male chorus.[citation needed]

Starting in 1980, O'Quinn has appeared in various feature films such as Silver Bullet,Tombstone, Heaven's Gate, Young Guns, alongside Rutger Hauer in Blind Fury, and as Howard Hughes in The Rocketeer. His earlytelevision roles include guest appearances onMiami Vice (episode "Give a Little, Take a Little"), Earth 2, Moonlighting, Star Trek: The Next Generation (episode "The Pegasus"), The New Twilight Zone (episode "Chameleon"),Homicide: Life on the Street (episode "Hate Crimes"), and a recurring role as Rear Admiral Thomas Boone on JAG as well as Colonel Will Ryan in episode 15 of season 1 on "NCIS" (episode "Enigma").

O'Quinn made his breakthrough by appearing as the deranged serial-killing title character inThe Stepfather. His acting performance was praised by film critic Roger Ebert, from theChicago Sun Times, who commented: "'The Stepfather' has one wonderful element: Terry O'Quinn's performance".[7] O'Quinn was nominated for both a Saturn Award and anIndependent Spirit Award for his performance. A sequel was released, two years after the first movie, but it wasn't as much of a success as the first movie. It grossed almost a million dollars less at the box office.[8][9] It was never explained why O'Quinn wasn't in the third installment of the series, in which the stepfather character was portrayed by Robert Wightman.[citation needed]

Around 1995, O'Quinn made guest appearances in The X-Files and Harsh Realm, produced by Chris Carter, who also cast him in the film The X-Files: Fight The Future and then once again in the final season. In 1996 O'Quinn started acting in the television seriesMillennium as Peter Watts, also produced byChris Carter. O'Quinn held this role for all three seasons of the series. O'Quinn holds the distinction of having played four different characters within the extended X-Files/Millennium continuum (the two shows being classed together since both Lance Henriksen's character of Frank Black andCharles Nelson Reilly's character of Jose Chung have appeared in both shows).[10][11]

O'Quinn appeared in the second season ofFalling Skies in 2012.[12]

The Stepfather films
Further information: The Stepfather (1987 film) and The Stepfather II

In 1987 and 1989, Terry played the main character and antagonist in the horror films The Stepfather and The Stepfather II. The franchise spawned a second sequel; however, Terry did not star in the third and final movie. In the first film, Terry plays the role of a deranged serial killer going by the name "Jerry Blake" (his character's real name and identity are never revealed to the audience), who is obsessed with having the ideal family. When the widowed mother and daughter do not comport with his expectations, he spirals into a spell of madness and attempts to brutally murder them. In the second, he escapes from the asylum in which he is placed and steals the identity of a man named Gene Clifford after reading his obituary in a local newspaper.

O'Quinn was approached by director of the2009 reboot of The Stepfather, Nelson McCormick, to make a cameo appearance in the film, but according to the producers O'Quinn turned down the offer.[13][14]

Lost
Further information: John Locke (Lost) andLost (TV series)

After a string of recurring appearances onAlias (2002–2003), as the FBI DirectorKendall, O'Quinn became a favorite of television producer J.J. Abrams. Following a seven-episode guest run on The West Wing in 2003–2004, O'Quinn received a call from Abrams indicating that the producer wanted to cast him in his new television drama Lostwithout any audition. In 2005 O'Quinn received an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama for his work as John Locke on the series Lost. O'Quinn admitted on the TV Guide Channel that he did not have much faith in Lost at first, calling it "The Mysterious Gilligan's Island of Dr. Moreau".[15] The show, however, became one of the most popular on television, and on September 16, 2007 he won an Emmy Awardfor Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Drama Series for his role, and was nominated again for an Emmy for the role in 2010, which he did not win. In a Tv.com interview O'Quinn commented that the reason he felt comfortable playing this character is because he's a bit like him.