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Peter Gallagher Biography

Peter Gallagher, was born in New York City, New York, United States as Peter Killian Gallagher. He is an American actor, musician and writer.

Gallagher is famous for  American Beauty (1999), The O.C. (2003) and The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997).

Peter Gallagher Age

Peter Killian Gallagher was born on August 19, 1955 in New York City, New York, U.S. He is 63 years old as of 2018.

Peter Gallagher Family

Gallagher was born in New York City to Mary Ann (née O’Shea; August 23, 1915 – June 6, 2004), who was a bacteriologist, and Thomas Francis Gallagher, Jr. (June 10, 1912 – November 16, 1999), who was an advertising executive. He has three older siblings. Gallagher was raised in Armonk, New York and he is of Irish descent.

Peter Gallagher Wife

Gallagher is married to Paula Harwood since 7 May 1983. The two are blessed with two children James and Kathryn.

Peter Gallagher Children | Peter Gallagher Daughter | Peter Gallagher Son

• Kathryn Gallagher, an actress and singer, (born:July 23, 1993)
• James Gallagher a film director (born:1990)

Peter Gallagher Height

American actor, musician and writer, Gallagher stands at 1.75 m tall.

Peter Gallagher  Image

Peter Gallagher Image

Peter Gallagher  Career

Gallagher featured on Broadway with Glenn Close in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing and made his feature film debut in the Taylor Hackford film The Idolmaker, but first achieved fame for his role in Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). He also starred as Sky Masterson in the 1992 Broadway hit revival of Guys and Dolls.

Gallagher played a potential career threat to Tim Robbins’s studio executive in The Player (1992); the comatose fiancé of Sandra Bullock in While You Were Sleeping (1995); a real estate salesman having an affair with Annette Bening in American Beauty (1999); a media executive in Mr. Deeds (2002); and a political reporter exposing media ethics during a presidential debate in The Last Debate.

From 2003 to 2007, Gallagher starred as Sandy Cohen, a Jewish public defender and corporate lawyer, on the Fox television show The O.C.. He hosts an annual award ceremony named “The Sandy Cohen Awards” or The Sandys, which, in honor of his character on The O.C., gives a scholarship to a law school student at UC Berkeley who wants to become a public defender. From February 13 through July 5, 2015, Gallagher starred on Broadway in On the Twentieth Century although he missed several performances in late February due to illness.

Peter Gallagher Tv Shows

• Covert Affairs 2010-2014
• The O.C. 2003-2007
• The Secret Lives of Men 1998
• Titanic 1996
• An Inconvenient Woman 1991
• The Murder of Mary Phagan 1988
• Skag 1980
• Cruel Intentions (pilot)
• The Gathering

Peter Gallagher  Net Worth

American actor Gallagher has an estimated net worth of $8 million.

Peter Gallagher New Girl

New Girl is an American television sitcom, where Peter Gallagher featured in as Gavin Schmidt.

Peter Gallagher American Beauty

Peter Gallagher starred in the American Beauty, a 1999 American drama film where he appeared in playing the role of Buddy Kane portraying a real estate salesman having an affair with Annette Bening.

Peter Gallagher Grace And Frankie

Gallagher featured in Grace and Frankie, an American comedy web television series, playing the role of Nick Skolka.

Peter Gallagher The Oc

The O.C. is an American teen drama television series where Peter Gallagher starred in as Sandy Cohen, portraying the protagonist and an idealistic public defender.

Peter Gallagher Mr. Deeds

Mr. Deeds is a 2002 American comedy film, where Peter Gallagher, stars in as Chuck Cedar, portraying the CEO for Blake Media, and Preston Blake’s longtime number two.

Peter Gallagher Titanic

Peter Gallagher starred in the Titanic a 1996 American two-part television miniseries where he played the role of Wynn Park. Titanic follows several characters on board the RMS Titanic when she sinks on her maiden voyage in 1912.

Peter Gallagher  Video

Peter Gallagher Interview

Published: July 6, 2015

Source: www.slantmagazine.com

The list of your co-stars and directors is staggering. Who haven’t you worked with?

I’ve been very lucky to work with people who were part of my mythology. I worked with James Cagney on the last thing he did. I would have been happy to play a hat rack. My mother went to college with his sister, Jean. Art Carney was in the movie too. My uncle used to be a janitor’s assistant at the local New Rochelle bank where Art’s dad would bring him in to tap dance at the Christmas parties. I walked into the first day of rehearsal to Cagney’s suite at the Hotel Carlyle and he looked up at me and said, “Black Irish.” At the end of the day he said, “Gallagher, I want you to meet my wife, Billie, but first we’ve got to find her.” I got behind his wheelchair and we went searching the apartment. “Oh, Billie. Billie.” And there she was hiding behind the curtains. This kind of madness and inclusion did my heart good because, if these guys were talking to me, what could be so bad?

Later, I did a movie for Neil Jordan called High Spirits with Peter O’Toole, and he’d been the reason I’d wanted to be an actor, after I saw Lawrence of Arabia. He had a kind of a divine madness, too, and a humor that just made me feel hopeful. We got along great. And Mike Nichols. Just getting notes from Mike or having lunch with Mike or just being in the same room with Mike—that’s something that stays with you forever. Or Bob Altman.

My happiest experiences have been collaborations with people whose vision I embrace and who welcome me into the process. That’s when good things can happen. I remember when we were doing The Player, Tim Robbins and Cynthia Stevenson were doing a scene and I was up next. Altman said, “Gallagher, I need you to go in there and do something.” I said, “Okay. What?” He said, “I don’t know.” I said, “When?” He said, “Next take.” “Oh. All right.” “You ready?” “I don’t know.” “Let’s go.” It’s exciting to work with people who have the technique to take the kind of chances that sometimes pay off.

When you’ve been thrown in situations like that, what have you done to help it pay off?

You just think, “Where have you been, where are you going, what story are we telling?” I’ve had wonderful teachers. I worked with my longtime acting coach, Mira Rostova, for 25 years. I’d still be studying with her, but she died a few years ago at the age of 99. She had an extraordinary life experience. She and her family fled the Bolshevik Revolution, then Nazi Germany. And she ended up in New York in time for the Actors Studio to begin. The people you study with transform how you view yourself and what you think is possible. Sometimes you get new information, but the most reassuring thing is getting permission to believe in what you already believe in. It lets you know you’re not crazy.

There were so many people in the theater, when I started out, that sort of recognized who I was and helped me—not just the big directors and choreographers, but stage managers and assistants who’d come up at the knee of the theater greats. They were passing on that knowledge, but when I came back to do Guys and Dolls in the ‘90s so many of them had died of AIDS. It was like a whole world disappeared. There are still a few from the golden era. I just had lunch with Hal Prince [director of the original ’78 production of On the Twentieth Century]. I worked with him on the next show Comden and Green wrote after that, A Doll’s Life, which was a big flop. I guess the thing I ache for, and the thing I enjoy most, is that sort of family, where you’re united to achieve a common goal and you do it with a kind of mad delight.

You certainly seem to take delight in the extremes of Oscar Jaffee, but still you ground the production as you did in other pieces that go to extremes, whether it’s the noir of The Underneath on film or the farce of Noises Off on stage.

That’s what I’ve been trying to do my whole life. Growing up, I took care of my mother a little bit because she suffered from depression. But she was brilliant. She was first-generation American, like my father, and became a bacteriologist who helped develop a better milieu for penicillin. She had Alzheimer’s for the last 20 years of her life. And when she was in the depths of it, even after she’d let go of most words, if I touched her, if I’d sing to her, or hold her, or dance with her, she would say, “That was real.”

The thing that the theater has given me, among many, many things, is you get to be present when things happen. And you don’t really have all that much to do with them. You’re more or less a vessel for the writing or the moment. No matter how outsized or comedic or diabolical, it usually has to do with something we recognize as true. We’re not alone anymore. The truth underneath things, the truth you find in a moment on stage with an audience, that’s where the magic is and the solace.

Is that why you’ve been so open to playing characters that aren’t necessarily the most loveable? You’re fine as long as it’s true?

I had a lot of preparation for not being dependent on people’s approval. My father’s dad was a coal miner in Pennsylvania and his mom died when he was really young. In a way, he never grew past that 7-year-old boy. Between that and having been a soldier in the war, he never really talked to me. And then I ended up being this pretty boy. Altman once said, “Gallagher, you’re so good-looking it makes me sick.” I thought, “Even this guy who loves me and keeps casting me thinks this way.” And I do too. You see a guy that’s too handsome walking down the street and you think, “That guy’s never worked a day in his life. Fuck him.” So, in a way, I can side with people who don’t think much of me. But it’s never really slowed me down.

I remember when I was doing Sex, Lies, and Videotape, I didn’t really think about whether he was an asshole or not. I thought it was a comedic performance. When [Steven] Soderbergh and I first met, I asked him how he saw it, and he said, “It’s a black comedy,” so I said, “I’m in.” People hated me. Or people who were really dangerous loved me. But for me it was the delight of cracking the puzzle, of portraying a character who would resonate with people either way.

How did you go about cracking the puzzle of playing Oscar Jaffee?

I did a lot of research, studied [legendary theater impresario and alleged theater ghost] David Belasco a lot, because I knew the role required size. Belasco was regarded by some as a genius and others a hack. That gave a wide spectrum to find the funny and find the true. Ultimately he was a passionate theater artist who believed the more real he could make the smell and the sounds and the look of it, the more he’d succeed in transporting the audience. There’s an essential truth to that which was a good kind of architecture to support you when you’re doing all the other stuff.

Part of the other stuff is Oscar’s desperation. He’s determined to “rise again” after a string of flops. Is hitting a wall and trying to bounce back something you can easily identify with?

All the time. I’ve hit the wall in spectacular fashion and will continue to. But it always comes down to the work. It’s like what Coach Belichick says to the Patriots: “Tune out the noise and do the work.” It’s the only place where the black dogs that are nipping at your heels fade into the background. I had a life crisis when I was 29. For a young man, and probably a young woman, 29 or 30 is a chance to become the person you want to be. There’s stuff that’s not working and you have to buckle down and do your homework. I was doing The Real Thing and it was the first time I got to work with an amazing group of people: Mike Nichols, Glenn Close, Jeremy Irons, Tom Stoppard. It was an enormous hit, but then everyone got other great jobs and went off. I stayed and barely got another audition. It started to chip away at my confidence. My agent encouraged me to go do this production of Miss Julie, which was just the worst thing at the worst time. There aren’t a lot of laughs in Strindberg.

And then for the first time I quit a show, Total Eclipse, which ended up giving Michael Cerveris his first job. The director wasn’t quite sure what story he wanted to tell and I wasn’t confident enough to find my way. That was a time I hit the wall. As my mother used to call it, it’s like having a flu of the soul. But you just have to hang in long enough to have it pass. And it led me to Mira Rostova and to a kind of freedom and experience that really nourished me.

The entire experience of doing On the Twentieth Century has been nearly an existential challenge for me. I was sick in the beginning. And then the Tony Award process. I suffer from insecurity at times. It helps you see things differently and do things you might not expect you’d be able to do, but the process can be very painful. For me, it goes back to the little boy who’s desperate to talk to his dad. I would try everything in my little power. My mother finally got him to come in when he’d get home from work. I’d already be in bed and he’d lie down and I’d have these questions saved up and he’d be asleep as soon as he hit the bed because he worked hard. I never blamed him for that.

When I get despairing sometimes, I try to take myself by the hand as a little boy and listen and tell myself, “That’s interesting. How do you feel? Can I help? What do you want to do?” And, of course, I made the error with my son and daughter. My son would ask a question and, man, I would not shut up. One of his eyes would independently drift off and I’d say, “Am I talking too much?” And his little head would nod and I’d say, “Okay. I’m sorry.” You can’t win.

But doing what you love is helpful. And being with people you love is helpful, having a family. If I’d continued to look for love in show business it would’ve been a far different experience. Building a life has been just as scary and challenging—and even more rewarding in some respects.