Date of Birth : Nov 11th 1909
Academy Award and BAFTA award-nominated American actor who often played hardened cops and ruthless villains.
Ryan’s breakout film role was as an anti-Semitic killer in Crossfire (1947), a film noir based on Brooks’s novel. From then on, Ryan’s specialty was tough/tender roles, finding particular expression in the films of celebrated directors such as Nicholas Ray, Robert Wise and Sam Fuller. In Ray’s On Dangerous Ground (1951) he portrayed a burnt-out city cop finding redemption while solving a rural murder. In Wise’s The Set-Up (1949), he played an over-the-hill boxer who is brutally punished for refusing to take a dive. Other important films were Anthony Mann’s western The Naked Spur, Sam Fuller’s uproarious Japanese set gangland thriller House of Bamboo, Bad Day at Black Rock, and the socially conscious heist movie Odds Against Tomorrow. He also appeared in several all-star war films, including The Longest Day (1962) and Battle of the Bulge (1965). He also played John the Baptist in MGM’s 1961 Technicolor epic King of Kings.
CAREER
Lawman ( 1971 )
The Wild Bunch ( 1970 )