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Bill Irwin

Bill Irwin brings a physical performer’s precision to the screen. An actor, clown, mime artist, comedian and playwright, he has built a career around movement, timing and the expressive possibilities of silence, while proving equally at home in dramatic roles. Born in Santa Monica on April 11, 1950, Irwin studied theatre at California Institute of the Arts before transferring to Oberlin College, where he graduated with a degree in theatre arts in 1974. He attended Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College the following year and helped found San Francisco’s Pickle Family Circus in 1975. That circus background became the foundation for stage shows including The Regard of Flight, Largely New York, Fool Moon and The Harlequin Studies. Irwin’s first featured film role came as Harold Hamgravy in Robert Altman’s Popeye. His screen career has largely been shaped by supporting parts that make specific use of his unusual range. He played Eddie Collins in Eight Men Out, tap-danced alongside Liza Minnelli in Stepping Out, appeared as a mime in Scenes from a Mall and brought his vaudevillian skills to Silent Tongue. Later roles included the solitary Mr. Leeds in Lady in the Water and Paul, father of Anne Hathaway’s Kym, in Rachel Getting Married. For many viewers, Irwin is also the warmly peculiar Mr. Noodle from Sesame Street. His television work has moved far beyond children’s comedy, however, with roles including serial killer Nate Haskell on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, therapist Dr. Peter Lindstrom on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and appearances in Legion, Star Trek: Discovery and The Gilded Age. Even when he is barely visible, Irwin can define a performance through voice and movement. He voiced the robot TARS in Interstellar and puppeteered the character in most non-computer-generated scenes. In 2026, he combined animatronics, puppetry and voice work to play the 60-foot Cyclops in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Across stage, film and television, his career remains connected by a performer’s instinct for what the body can communicate before—or instead of—words.