Robert Sean Leonard Biography
Born: February 28, 1969
In 1986, clean-cut American actor Robert Sean Leonard made his Broadway debut in +Brighton Beach Memoirs and his film debut in The_Manhattan_Project. His first starring film role was as a high-school vampire in the '80s teen comedy My Best Friend Is a Vampire (1988). But Leonard's chiseled features and dark brown eyes made him perfect for the role of Neil Perry, the sensitive prep-school student whose acting aspirations are crushed by his wealthy father in the much-loved drama Dead_Poets_Society (1989). His next few films were period pieces: the Merchant-Ivory production Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990), Kenneth_Branagh's Much_Ado_About_Nothing (1993), and Martin_Scorsese's The Age of Innocence (also 1993). Leonard also earned a Young Artist award for his performance in the WWII-era musical Swing_Kids in 1993 and earned his first Tony nomination that same year for a revival of +Candida. Though he often chose the stage over the screen, his theatrical training directed him toward roles in the talky feature films Married to It (1993), Safe_Passage (1994), and The Last Days of Disco (1998). He also fared well in television adaptations of stage productions (The_Boys_Next_Door [1996], In the Gloaming [1997]) and based-on-a-true-story docudramas (Killer: A Journal of Murder [1995], A Glimpse of Hell [2001]).
In 2001, Leonard reunited with Dead_Poets_Society co-star Ethan_Hawke to appear in the independent drama Chelsea_Walls, Hawke's directorial debut. He also co-starred with Hawke and Uma_Thurman in Richard_Linklater's intensely talky drama Tape. After spending most of his career on the stage, Leonard finally earned a Tony award for his portrayal of A.E. Houseman in Tom_Stoppard's +The Invention of Love. Also on Broadway, he could be seen in +A Long Day's Journey Into Night and +The Violet Hour. Though Leonard's 2004 projects would include the feature film The_I_Inside, based on the play +Point of Death, it would soon become apparent that television was his true calling when, later that same year, he donned a white coat as Dr. James Wilson on the phenominally successful series House. Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
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