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Billy Zane

Billy Zane has built a career around presence: the composed stare, the measured delivery and the sense that charm may be hiding something dangerous. Born in Chicago on February 24, 1966, he grew up in a family with Greek roots and two professional actors for parents. His own work would eventually stretch across film, television, theatre, voice acting and production. Zane’s first screen roles came in Back to the Future and Critters, but Dead Calm gave him international recognition. As Hughie Warriner, opposite Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill, he found an effective early use for his ability to make confidence feel threatening. That quality followed him into roles including The Collector in Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight and the corrupt Colonel Graham in Posse. His filmography has rarely stayed in one lane. He played John Justice Wheeler in Twin Peaks, appeared alongside Tilda Swinton in Orlando and joined the ensemble of Tombstone as the Shakespearean actor Mr. Fabian. In 1996, he moved into full-scale comic-book adventure as the title character in The Phantom. A year later came his most widely recognized role: Caledon Hockley, Rose’s wealthy and controlling fiancé in Titanic. The performance earned him an MTV Movie Award nomination for Best Villain, a Blockbuster Entertainment Award and a shared Screen Actors Guild nomination with the film’s ensemble. Zane has also shown an appetite for projects outside conventional leading-man territory. He starred in and produced the silent Ed Wood-scripted parody I Woke Up Early the Day I Died, voiced John Rolfe in Pocahontas II and Ansem in Kingdom Hearts, and appeared on Broadway as Billy Flynn in Chicago. His television work has ranged from Charmed and Community to playing fictional versions of himself in The Boys. That mixture of polished menace, theatrical confidence and occasional self-parody gives Zane’s career its particular shape. Whether playing a villain, a comic-book hero or an exaggerated version of Billy Zane, he understands the value of committing fully to the part.