Loren Dean Biography
Born: July 31, 1969
An actor who bears an uncanny resemblance to Val_Kilmer, Loren Dean is as talented as he is underrated. Largely a supporting player, Dean has twice demonstrated his considerable mettle in films where he has been cast as the title protagonist -- first in the gangster drama Billy_Bathgate (1991) and then in Mumford (1999), Lawrence_Kasdan's tale of a small town's mysterious psychiatrist.
Born in Las Vegas on July 31, 1969, Dean was raised in L.A. by his mother after his parents divorced when he was a small child. He saw his father on the weekends when the two went to the cinema; it was through these weekly outings that Dean developed an interest in film. He also took an early interest in music, something that carried him through a tumultuous adolescence that was marked by a short stint as a runaway in San Francisco when he was 16.
Following his 1986 graduation from high school, Dean moved to New York to pursue a career in acting. Living in relative poverty, he eventually found an agent through a friend of a friend, and he began appearing onstage. The actor made his film debut in 1988 as the brother of an undercover cop in Martha_Coolidge's Plain_Clothes, and a year later, he played Lili_Taylor's notoriously bad ex-boyfriend Joe in Cameron_Crowe's celebrated ...Say Anything.
Dean got what should have been a major career breakthrough in 1991, when he starred as Billy_Bathgate's titular street urchin turned mob confidante. Unfortunately, the film flopped, although even its most naysaying critics usually singled Dean's performance out for praise. He subsequently appeared in a supporting capacity in films ranging from Apollo_13 (1995) to How to Make an American Quilt (1995) to Gattaca (1997), and he starred in a handful of films destined for video oblivion, such as 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), and Starf*cker (1998), which cast him as a cokehead ex-sitcom star.
Dean received some of the best notices of his career when he starred as the eponymous small town shrink of Mumford (1999). He managed to stand out in a pleasant, unforced performance that was ably complemented by an ensemble cast which included Hope_Davis, Alfre_Woodard, Jason_Lee, Mary McDonnell, and Pruitt_Taylor_Vince. Many observers were left to wonder where he had been hiding all this time. The following year, Dean resurfaced in Space_Cowboys, an adventure drama that cast him as an astronaut sent along on a mission with a group of grizzled NASA veterans (Clint_Eastwood, Tommy_Lee_Jones, James_Garner, and Donald_Sutherland) to repair a faulty satellite. Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi
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