Christopher Lloyd Bio
Christopher Lloyd Bio
Christopher Allen Lloyd (born October 22, 1938) is an American actor. He is best known for playing Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family and its sequel Addams Family Values, and Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He rose to prominence in the 1980s as Jim Ignatowski in the television series Taxi.
Lloyd has used his vocal talents in animation, frequently voicing villains. He provided voice to the character Hacker on the animated PBS series Cyberchase. Lloyd has won three Primetime Emmy Awards and an Independent Spirit Award, and has been nominated for two Saturn Awards and a Daytime Emmy Award.
Christopher Lloyd: Early life
Lloyd was born in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Samuel R. Lloyd, a lawyer, and his wife Ruth (née Lapham), a singer and sister of San Francisco mayor Roger Lapham. His maternal grandfather, Lewis Lapham, was one of the founders of the Texaco oil company, and Lloyd is also a descendant of Mayflower passenger John Howland. Lloyd attended the Fessenden School, a preparatory school in Newton, Massachusetts. Lloyd was raised in New Canaan, Connecticut, and Westport, Connecticut, where he graduated from Staples High School in 1958.
His mother, an heiress to the Lapham-Texaco oil fortune, donated her family's ancestral home, Waveny Park, to the town of New Canaan.
Christopher Lloyd: Career
Lloyd began acting by age 14 and started apprenticing in summer stock. He took acting classes in New York City at age 19, some at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner. He appeared in several Broadway productions, including Happy End, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Red, White and Maddox, Kaspar, The Harlot and the Hunted, The Seagull, Total Eclipse, Macbeth, In the Boom Boom Room, Cracks, Professional Resident Company, What Every Woman Knows, And They Put Handcuffs on the Flowers, The Father, King Lear, and Power Failure.
His first major motion picture role was as a psychiatric patient in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Prior to this, he appeared uncredited in the 1970 film Airport. However, he may be most remembered for his roles as "Reverend" Jim Ignatowski, the ex-hippie cabbie on the TV sitcom Taxi, and the eccentric inventor Emmett "Doc" Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy of science fiction films, for which he was nominated for a Saturn Award. He portrayed the villain Maj. Bartholomew 'Butch' Cavendish in The Legend of the Lone Ranger, a role he has played numerous times in various spin-offs and incarnations. He also played notable roles as Klingon Commander Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Professor Plum in Clue, Professor Dimple in an episode of Road to Avonlea, the title role in The Pagemaster, the villain Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a wacky sound effects man named Zoltan in Radioland Murders, and Uncle Fester in the big screen adaptations of The Addams Family.
In 1994 he played an angel named Al in the movie, Angels in the Outfield. In 1999 Lloyd was reunited onscreen with Michael J. Fox in an episode of Spin City titled "Back to the Future IV - Judgment Day", where Lloyd plays Owen Kingston, Mike Flaherty's (Fox's character) former mentor who stops by City Hall to see him, only to proclaim himself as God. That same year, he starred in the movie remake of the 1960s series My Favorite Martian. Also in November 2007, Lloyd was reunited onscreen with his former Taxi co-star Judd Hirsch in the Season 4 episode "Graphic" of the TV series Numb3rs. He starred in the television series Deadly Games in the mid-1990s and was a regular in the TV series Stacked in the mid-2000s.
Lloyd also acted as the star in the point-and-click adventure game Toonstruck, which was released in November 1996. He played Ebenezer Scrooge in a 2008 production of A Christmas Carol at the Kodak Theatre with John Goodman and Jane Leeves. In 2009, he appeared in a trailer for a fake horror film entitled Gobstopper, where he played Willy Wonka as a horror movie villain. In October 2009, he did a two-man show with comic performer Joe Gallois in several Midwest cities. Lloyd played Mr. Goodman in the 2010 remake Piranha 3D.
In September 2010, he reprised his role as Doctor Emmett Brown in Back to the Future: The Game, an episodic adventure game series being developed by Telltale Games.
In the summer of 2010, he starred as Willy Loman in a Weston Playhouse production of Death of a Salesman.
On its January 21, 2011, episode, he appeared in the J.J. Abrams television series Fringe.
In August 2011 he was hired as the character of Dr. Emmett Brown from Back to the Future by Garbarino appliance company in Argentina, to an advertising campaign, and also worked for Nike, in the campaign "Back For the Future" for the benefit of The Michael J. Fox Foundation.
Christopher Lloyd: Personal life
Lloyd seldom appears in public or gives interviews. Lloyd has been married four times but he has never had children. His nephew, Sam Lloyd, is best known for playing Ted Buckland, the lawyer on Scrubs.
Lloyd's home was destroyed in the Tea Fire of November 2008 in Montecito, California.
At a Q&A session at a Back to the Future trilogy showing in Hollywood in the summer of 2009, Lloyd was asked which of the Back to the Future films was his favorite. He responded "the third one, because for one thing it's a Western and I'm a fan of those, and second, it had a love story. I had always wanted to be in a love story and here I got a chance to be at the center of one". Nearly a year later on May 1, 2010, he appeared at the Tampa Theatre during a screening of Back to the Future, where he participated in another Q&A.
Lloyd appeared at a 25th anniversary screening of Back to the Future in February 2010 at the Hollywood Blvd. Theater in Woodridge, Illinois, along with Lea Thompson, Claudia Wells, and James Tolkan. All the proceeds were donated to The Michael J. Fox Foundation.
