James Tolkan

Overview

Known for
Acting
Gender
Other
Birthday
Jun 20, 1931 (93 years old)

James Tolkan

Known For

Val
1h 49m
Movie 2021

Val

For over 40 years Val Kilmer, one of Hollywood’s most mercurial and/or misunderstood actors has been documenting his own life and craft through film and video. He has amassed thousands of hours of footage, from 16mm home movies made with his brothers, to time spent in iconic roles for blockbuster movies like Top Gun, The Doors, Tombstone, and Batman Forever. This raw, wildly original and unflinching documentary reveals a life lived to extremes and a heart-filled, sometimes hilarious look at what it means to be an artist and a complex man.

Bone Tomahawk
2h 13m
Movie 2015

Bone Tomahawk

During a shootout in a saloon, Sheriff Hunt injures a suspicious stranger. The doctor's assistant, wife of the local foreman, tends to him in prison. That night, the town is attacked and they both disappear—only the arrow of a cannibal tribe is found. Hunt and a few of his men go in search of the prisoner and the foreman's wife.

Back in Time
1h 35m
Movie 2015

Back in Time

Cast, crew and fans explore the 'Back to the Future' time-travel trilogy's resonance throughout our culture—30 years after Marty McFly went back in time.

Cobra
0h 44m
TV Show 1993

Cobra

Cobra is an American television action/adventure series starring Michael Dudikoff. It ran for just one season in syndication.

The Hat Squad
0h 48m
TV Show 1992

The Hat Squad

The Hat Squad is a crime drama television series that ran for only one season on CBS, during the 1992–1993 season. 13 episodes were made, but only 11 of them aired.

Little Spies
1h 29m
Movie 1986

Little Spies

When a runaway stray dog is rescued by the local neighborhood kids, they discover a nearby gang is involved.

Armed and Dangerous
1h 28m
Movie 1986

Armed and Dangerous

After policeman Frank Dooley is framed for theft and loses his job on the force, he joins a security guard agency and teams up with inept former defense lawyer Norman Kane. When the two botch a job guarding a local warehouse, they begin to uncover corruption within the company and their union.

Off Beat
1h 32m
Movie 1986

Off Beat

Joe Gower's job is skating through library shelves, fetching books. A police officer/friend of his is chosen to participate in a charity dance performance. Gower agrees to take his place in the show by posing as a police officer. He falls for a female officer in the show and gets into various scrapes with fellow cops and also crooks. And he dances.

Mary
0h 30m
TV Show 1985

Mary

Mary is an American sitcom that aired on CBS during the 1985-86 television season. The series stars Mary Tyler Moore in her return to series television after an absence of over six years, during which time she appeared on Broadway in Whose Life Is It Anyway? and in the dramatic film Ordinary People. After The Mary Tyler Moore Show, her subsequent ventures into series television, the variety show Mary and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour had been short-running ratings disasters, and Moore decided to return to the sitcom format which had brought her the greatest television success.

Biography

Fiery, forceful and intimidating character actor James Tolkan has carved out a nice little niche for himself in both movies and television alike as a formidable portrayer of fierce and flinty hard-boiled tough guy types. James Stewart Tolkan was born on June 20, 1931 in Calumet, Michigan. His father, Ralph M. Tolkan, was a cattle dealer. James attended the University of Iowa, Coe College and Eastern Arizona College. After serving a year-long stint in the United States Navy, Tolkan went to New York and studied acting with both Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler at the Actors Studio. Short and bald, with beady, intense eyes, a wiry, compact, muscular build, a gruff, jarring, high-decibel voice, and an aggressive, confrontational, blunt-as-a-battle-ax, rough-around-the-edges demeanor, Tolkan has been often cast as rugged, cynical no-nonsense cops, mean, domineering authority figures, and various ruthless and dangerous criminals. Tolkan first began acting in movies in the late 1960s and was highly effective in two pictures for Sidney Lumet: He was a rabidly homophobic police lieutenant in the superbly gritty Serpico (1973) and a sneaky district attorney in the equally excellent Prince of the City (1981). Best known as the obnoxiously overzealous high school principal Gerard Strickland in the Back to the Future films, Tolkan's other most memorable roles include Napolean in Woody Allen's Love and Death (1975), a ramrod army officer in WarGames (1983), mayor Robert Culp's mordant, wisecracking assistant in Turk 182 (1985), the hard-nosed Stinger in Top Gun (1986), the choleric Detective Lubric in Masters of the Universe (1987), meek mob accountant Numbers in Dick Tracy (1990), and Wesley Snipes' bullish superior in Boiling Point (1993).

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