Ted Levine

He brought shudders to audiences worldwide as Jamie Gumb, the cross-dressing serial killer in "Silence of the Lambs" (1991) but the stage-trained Ted Levine has proven himself as a character player with range, portraying outlaws, jilted husbands, cops, drunks, and the like.

Levine left Marlboro College in Vermont to pursue the stage, joining the Burlington (VT) Shakespeare Festival. He later toured as Sgt. Toomey in the national company of "Biloxi Blues." Dedication to theatre led Levine to turn to directing as well as acting and he established the Dratman Theatre Company in Ann Arbor, Michigan, before moving to Chicago to join first The Remains Ensemble and later the famed Steppenwolf Theatre Company. He has worked extensively at Steppenwolf, including a 1995 appearance in Sam Shepard's "Buried Child" directed by Gary Sinise.

Levine first began appearing on TV with bit parts in "Through Naked Eyes" (ABC, 1983), and "The Killing Floor" for "American Playhouse" (PBS, 1984). He was a regular on "Crime Story" a 1986 NBC series produced by Michael Mann. Levine's first break in features came with "Ironweed" (1987) in which he played Pocano Pete. He appeared in Costa-Gavras' "Betrayed" (1988) and "Love at Large" (1990) before gaining notice as serial killer Jamie Gumb in "Silence of the Lambs" (1991). Levine subsequently has alternated between stage, film and TV with apparent ease. He co-starring with Mickey Rourke in "The Last Outlaw" (HBO, 1993) and opposite Cheryl Ladd twice in "The Fulfillment of Mary Gray" (CBS, 1989) and "Broken Promises" (CBS, 1993). Levine was in three films in 1995: Tobe Hooper's thriller "The Mangler", "Georgia" (as Mare Winningham's supportive husband), and "Heat" which reteamed him with Michael Mann.

Following a stretch of supporting roles in indie films, Levine landed on TV as the lead in "Wonderland" (ABC 2000), writer-director Peter Berg's controversial and short-lived depiction of life in a surreal mental institution; only two of the eight completed episodes aired on ABC, although the entire series did eventually surface elsewhere. By coincidence, Levine also co-starred in an unrelated film called "Wonderland" (2003), a biopic about the late porn star John Holmes (Val Kilmer) and his involvement in a drug-related murder on Los Angeles' Wonderland Avenue in the early 1980s. Levine's next TV role offered far more stability: he co-starred on the critically-acclaimed comedy-mystery series "Monk" (USA 2002-09) as Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, the commanding officer of damaged detective Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub).

During this era, Levine's film work ranged from genre hits like "The Fast and the Furious" (2001) and Alexandre Aja's horror remake "The Hills Have Eyes" to critically-acclaimed art house fare like "Memoirs of a Geisha" (2005), "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (2006), "American Gangster" (2007) and Martin Scorsese's psychological thriller "Shutter Island" (2010). Levine's return to television came in a supporting role on the buzzed-about but ill-fated series "Luck" (HBO 2012), a drama about horse racing that was derailed in large part by allegations of animal mistreatment on set. On "The Bridge" (FX 2013-14), a police procedural drama set on the border between El Paso and Juarez, Levine played Lt. Hank Wade, the commanding officer and father figure of autistic American detective Sonya Cross (Diane Kruger).