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Bill Raymond

Bill Raymond has built the kind of career that refuses to stay in one lane. Born in San Francisco on September 9, 1938, the American actor has worked across experimental theater, film, television and audio drama, moving comfortably between leading roles, ensemble parts and characters whose impact exceeds their screen time. For many viewers, Raymond is best known as The Greek in the second and fifth seasons of HBO’s The Wire. As the mysterious head of an international criminal organization, he brings a measured, elusive quality to one of the show’s most quietly powerful figures. His television work also includes appearances in Miami Vice, Law & Order, Third Watch, Ed and As the World Turns. Later roles include Grand Albert in the children’s series Super Wings and Dr. Carroll in The Cobblestone Corridor, which premiered on Connecticut Public Television in 2016. Raymond’s film credits stretch across an unusually varied group of movies, including Eight Men Out, C.H.U.D., Quick Change, How I Got into College, My New Gun, The Crow, 12 Monkeys, Dogville and Michael Clayton. In Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, he played Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Schuyler Colfax. He also took the lead in the 2014 ghost film Foreclosure opposite Michael Imperioli. His sustained collaboration with Vermont filmmaker Jay Craven produced appearances in seven independent films, among them Where the Rivers Flow North, A Stranger in the Kingdom, The Year That Trembled, Disappearances and Peter and John. The stage has been just as central to Raymond’s work. He was an active member and co-artistic director of the experimental theater group Mabou Mines during the 1970s and 1980s, after participating in the early years of San Francisco’s R.G. Davis Mime Troupe. At Hartford Stage, he played Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol for 17 of its first 19 years before retiring from the role in 2016. Raymond has also maintained a long presence in audio drama, playing archaeologist T.J. Teru throughout all 13 chapters of the ZBS Foundation series Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe, produced from 1982 to 2018.