David Marshall Grant

A versatile actor who bounded into Broadway productions and Hollywood films immediately after graduating from the Yale School of Drama, Grant played leading roles in a number of films and TV-movies before settling into a run of colorful and provocative character roles.

A student at Julliard during summer breaks from high school, Grant later joined the Yale Repertory Company during his college days, and in 1978 (the year he graduated), made a strong impression in the play "Bent." The following year he recreated his role on Broadway opposite Richard Gere in this powerful study of gays imprisoned during WWII in a Nazi concentration camp. He also made a likable feature debut as one of a group of college students spending their junior year abroad in the mild teen comedy "French Postcards."

While continuing to act onstage in "The Survivor," "The Tempest," and directing a Los Angeles production of "Bent," Grant performed in TV-movies ("Kent State" 1981, "Legs" 1983) and appeared prominently in interesting if minor films including "Happy Birthday Gemini" (1980). He attracted attention opposite another new face, Kevin Costner, as the younger and more reckless of two bicycling brothers in "American Flyer" (1984). Grant would later play other gung-ho characters, both sympathetic and not, in "Bat 21" (1988) and "Air America" (1990).

Similarly magnetic TV roles included Robert Kennedy in "Citizen Cohn" (1992) and a sly Nazi in "Breaking Point" (1989). He portrayed an ambitious politician in James Foley's screen version of John Grisham's "The Chamber" (1996). Grant's 1989 role as Russell, a gay man who enters the yuppie sphere of pals on TV's acclaimed "thirtysomething," attracted considerable attention. One brief scene, showing Grant talking in bed with a man he had picked up, enraged conservatives nationwide and reportedly lost the show some of its commercial sponsorship.

Grant, however, emerged unscathed, playing supporting roles in features including "Forever Young" (1992) and receiving acclaim for his role as a troubled Mormon in the Broadway production, "Angels in America: Millennium Approaches" and its companion piece "Angels in America: Perestroika" (1993-94). Grant has also written the plays, "Snakebit," which has been performed in regional theaters throughout the USA, and "Current Events."