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Barry Tubb

Barry Tubb is an American actor, director and screenwriter whose career has moved between Hollywood productions, independent filmmaking and the cowboy culture of his native Texas. Born in Snyder on February 13, 1963, he won the state junior bull-riding championship at 15 before graduating from Snyder High School in 1981 and beginning stage training in San Francisco. After moving to Hollywood in the mid-1980s, Tubb found early television work as a regular on the baseball ensemble series Bay City Blues and as a recurring rookie police officer on Hill Street Blues. He also took on sharply different dramatic parts, playing a shy gay teenager coming out to his parents in Consenting Adult and a wealthy corporate upstart drawn into murder in Billionaire Boys Club. His film roles included supporting appearances in Mask and The Legend of Billie Jean, along with his part as Wolfman in Top Gun. But Tubb’s Texas background found its clearest screen expression in the Westerns Lonesome Dove and Return to Lonesome Dove, where he played Jasper Fant. Away from the camera, he appeared with Mary Tyler Moore and Lynn Redgrave in the 1988 Broadway production of Sweet Sue, which ran for 164 performances. He later acted opposite Kelly Lynch in the drama Warm Summer Rain. Tubb eventually turned toward independent work and interests beyond Hollywood. In 1991, he moved to France and rode in a Wild West show. He then starred in, directed, produced and co-wrote the low-budget Cowboys and Indians thriller Blood Trail. In 2002, he directed the family film Grand Champion, shooting the story of a boy and his prize-winning steer in his hometown of Snyder. His participation in gatherings held by the American Cowboy Culture Association further reflects a career that has remained closely tied to the world he came from.