Date of Birth : Jun 4th 1936
One of Dern’s first film roles was in the Sydney Pollack picture They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? in 1969. He played the enemy and killer of John Wayne’s character in The Cowboys, and starred along with Jack Nicholson in The King of Marvin Gardens. Dern is generally regarded as a character actor, and has a reputation of playing unstable and villainous characters. His best-known role may be that of Freeman Lowell, the caretaker of Earth’s last forests in Silent Running (1972), but other memorable roles include Tom Buchanan in Robert Redford’s The Great Gatsby and Capt. Bob Hyde in Coming Home, for which he received an Academy Award nomination.
His most recent effort is the independent movie The Astronaut Farmer and a supporting role on the HBO’s series, Big Love.
(This statement, however, is not true. Wayne’s character was killed by the bartender in The Shootist and by Japanese snipers in Sands of Iwo Jima and The Fighting Seabees. The bartender, one of the snipers, and Dern are the only ones to be seen killing Wayne on film. Wayne’s characters also died twice by drowning in Wake of the Red Witch and Reap the Wild Wind and once by suicide after being stabbed in The Alamo.)