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Edward Furlong

Edward Furlong arrived on screen with the kind of first role that can define an entire career. Born on August 2, 1977, in Glendale, California, he had no acting experience when casting director Mali Finn discovered him at the Pasadena Boys and Girls Club. After an uncertain first reading and a second chance, Furlong was cast as John Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. His wary, rebellious performance gave the blockbuster a convincing human center and earned him an MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance and a Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor. Rather than simply repeat John Connor, Furlong spent the 1990s moving through troubled families, horror stories, independent dramas and offbeat comedy. He appeared in Pet Sematary Two, American Heart, A Home of Our Own, Little Odessa and Before and After, working alongside performers including Jeff Bridges, Kathy Bates, Tim Roth, Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson. Brainscan made particularly direct use of his uneasy screen presence, casting him as a horror- and video game-obsessed teenager pulled into something sinister. In 1998, Furlong showed two very different sides of his work. John Waters gave him the title role in Pecker, allowing him to step away from the dark characters that had shaped much of his early career. In American History X, opposite Edward Norton, he returned to heavier material as a teenager caught within a cycle of hatred. He later played a convict in Steve Buscemi’s Animal Factory and took roles in Jimmy & Judy, The Crow: Wicked Prayer, Night of the Demons and CSI: NY. Furlong’s adult career was significantly affected by substance abuse, and many of his later films received direct-to-DVD releases. His connection to John Connor nevertheless continued: he reprised the role in the T2-3D: Battle Across Time attraction, and his facial likeness appeared in Terminator: Dark Fate after he participated in facial-capture filming. More recently, he has appeared in Heart of a Champion, The Forest Hills and the Lovecraftian horror film Unspeakable: Beyond the Wall of Sleep.