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Anthony Zerbe

Anthony Zerbe has built a screen career around an ability to project authority, menace and hard-earned intelligence—sometimes all within the same character. Born in Long Beach, California, on May 20, 1936, he became interested in acting through stage productions at 17. After graduating from Pomona College in 1958 and serving in the United States Air Force from 1959 to 1961, he studied at the Stella Adler Studio in New York City. His New York stage debut came in a 1961 production of The Cave Dwellers. That theatrical grounding carried into a wide-ranging career in television and film. Zerbe appeared across series including Mission: Impossible, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Hawaii Five-O, Columbo and The Rockford Files. On Harry O, he played Lieutenant Trench with a sonorous baritone created for the character, winning a 1976 Emmy for Outstanding Continuing Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. He later took a principal role as Teaspoon Hunter in The Young Riders. His film work shows how readily he could fit into very different worlds. He played one of the title characters in The Molly Maguires, the cult commander Matthias in The Omega Man and leper colony chief Toussaint in Papillon. Later roles included Roger Stuart in The Dead Zone, Bond villain Milton Krest in Licence to Kill and Admiral Dougherty in Star Trek: Insurrection. In The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, he appeared as Councillor Hamann, bringing a measured human presence to the science-fiction saga. He also played Senator Horton Mitchell in American Hustle and Mr. Crumwald in Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks. Zerbe’s work has never belonged to just one medium. Alongside his screen roles, he played Benjamin Hubbard in a Broadway revival of The Little Foxes, served as artistic director of Reflections, A New Plays Festival, and toured with Roscoe Lee Browne in Behind the Broken Words. It is a career shaped by range, a strong theatrical foundation and a distinctive feel for complicated men.