Christopher Allen Lloyd (born October 22, 1938) is an American actor best known for his roles as Emmett "Doc" Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, Jim Ignatowski in the television series Taxi, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family and its sequel Addams Family Values, and Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Lloyd has won three Primetime Emmy Awards and an Independent Spirit Award, and has been nominated for two Saturn Awards and a Daytime Emmy Award. He has also done voiceover work in animation, usually cast as villains due to his distinctive voice.
Early life
Lloyd was born in Stamford, Connecticut, on October 22, 1938, the son of Samuel R. Lloyd, a lawyer, and his wife Ruth (née Lapham), a singer and sister of San Francisco mayor Roger Lapham. He is the youngest of four girls and three boys, one of whom, Samuel Lloyd, was an actor in the 1950s and 1960s. Lloyd's maternal grandfather, Lewis Lapham, was one of the founders of the Texaco oil company, and Lloyd is also a descendant of Mayflower passengers, including John Howland. Lloyd was raised in New Canaan, Connecticut.
Career
Lloyd began his career apprenticing at summer theaters in Mount Kisco, New York, and Hyannis, Massachusetts. He took acting classes in New York City at age 19â€"some at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre with Sanford Meisnerâ€"and he recalled making his New York theater debut in Fernando Arrabal's play And They Put Handcuffs on the Flowers, saying, "I was a replacement and it was my first sort of job in New York." He made his Broadway debut in the short-lived Red, White and Maddox (1969), and went on to Off-Broadway roles in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Kaspar, The Harlot and the Hunted, The Seagull, Total Eclipse, Macbeth, In the Boom Boom Room, Cracks, Professional Resident Company, What Every Woman Knows, The Father, King Lear, and Power Failure. He returned to Broadway for the musical Happy End. He performed in Andrej Wajda's adaptation of Dostoyefsky's The Possessed at Yale Repertory Theater, and in Jay Broad's premiere of White Pelican at the P.A.F. Playhouse in Huntington Station, New York, on Long Island.
In 1977, he said of his training at the Neighborhood Playhouse under Meisner, "My work up to then had been very uneven. I would be good one night, dull the next. Meisner made me aware of how to be consistent in using the best that I have to offer. But I guess nobody can teach you the knack, or whatever it is, that helps you come to life on stage."
His first movie role was as a psychiatric patient in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He is perhaps best known for his roles as "Reverend" Jim Ignatowski, the ex-hippie cabbie on the TV sitcom Taxi, for which he won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series; and the eccentric inventor Emmett "Doc" Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy of science-fiction films, for which he was nominated for a Saturn Award. In 1986, he played the reviled Professor B.O. Beanes in the television series Amazing Stories. Other roles include Klingon Commander Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (on suggestion of fellow actor and friend Leonard Nimoy), Professor Plum in Clue, Professor Dimple in an episode of Road to Avonlea (for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series); the villain Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit; a wacky sound-effects man named Zoltan in Radioland Murders; and Uncle Fester in the movie adaptations of The Addams Family.
Lloyd portrayed the star character in the point-and-click adventure game Toonstruck, released in November 1996. In 1999, he was reunited onscreen with Michael J. Fox in an episode of Spin City entitled "Back to the Future IV â€" Judgment Day", in which Lloyd plays Owen Kingstonâ€"the former mentor of Fox's character, Mike Flaherty'sâ€"who stops by City Hall to see him, only to proclaim himself God. That same year, Lloyd starred in the movie remake of the 1960s series My Favorite Martian. He starred in the television series Deadly Games in the mid-1990s, and was a regular in the TV series Stacked in the mid-2000s. In 2003 he guest starred in three of the 13 produced episodes of Tremors: The Series as the character Cletus Poffenburger. In November 2007, Lloyd was reunited onscreen with his former Taxi co-star Judd Hirsch in the season-four episode "Graphic" of the TV series Numb3rs. He played Ebenezer Scrooge in a 2008 production of A Christmas Carol at the Kodak Theatre with John Goodman and Jane Leeves. In 2009, he appeared in a comedic trailer for a faux horror film entitled Gobstopper, in which he played Willy Wonka as a horror-movie-style villain. In October 2009, he did a two-man show with comic performer Joe Gallois in several Midwest cities.
In the summer of 2010, he starred as Willy Loman in a Weston Playhouse production of Death of a Salesman. That September, he reprised his role as Doctor Emmett Brown in Back to the Future: The Game, an episodic adventure game series developed by Telltale Games. On January 21, 2011, he appeared in the episode "The Firefly" of the J. J. Abrams television series Fringe. That August, he reprised the role of Dr. Emmett Brown (from Back to the Future) as part of an advertising campaign for Garbarino, an Argentine appliance company, and also as part of the Nike Company's "Back For the Future" campaign for the benefit of The Michael J. Fox Foundation. In 2012 and 2013, Lloyd reprised the role of Brown in two episodes of the stopmotion series Robot Chicken. He was a guest star on the 100th episode of the USA Network sitcom Psych as Martin Khan in 2013.
In May 2013, Lloyd appeared as the narrator and the character Azdak in the Bertold Brecht play The Caucasian Chalk Circle, produced by the Classic Stage Company in New York.
Personal life
Lloyd has been married four times. First to Catharine Dallas Dixon Boyd, on June 6, 1959. His brother, Samuel Lloyd III, was head usher. The couple divorced in 1971 after 12 years of marriage. Second to actress Kay Tornborg, from 1974 to 1987. Third to Carol Ann Vanek, from the late 1980s to 1991. Fourth to Jane Walker Wood, screenwriter (Bob the Butler), from 1992 to 2005.
After his divorce from Wood, in Montecito, California, Lloyd bought a smaller house on March 23, 2007, and that May listed his 8.07-acre old estate for over $11m; although the price was later dropped to $6.5m. Wood and he had bought the house in 1997 for $1.6m. This home, which was on the market at the time, was destroyed in the Tea Fire of November 2008 in Montecito, California.
On May 1, 2010, he appeared at an outdoor screening of Back to the Future held by the Tampa Theatre at The River Tower Park in Tampa, Florida, where he participated in a question-and-answer session.
Lloyd's philanthropist mother, Ruth Lapham Lloyd, died in 1984 at age 88. Her surviving children at the time aside from Christopher were Donald L. Mygatt, Antoinette L. Mygatt Lucas, Samuel Lloyd III, Ruth Lloyd Scott Ax, and Adele L. Kinney. Lloyd's nephew, Sam Lloyd, is best known for playing Ted Buckland, the lawyer on Scrubs.
Filmography
Film
Television
Video games
Awards
References
Further reading
- Napoleon, Davi (1991). Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American Theater. Iowa State University Press. ISBN 0-8138-1713-7. Includes discussion of Lloyd's early work Off-Broadway, including the production of Happy End at the Chelsea Theater Center, and on Broadway, Kaspar, and Total Eclipse.
External links
- Christopher Lloyd at the Internet Movie Database
- Christopher Lloyd at the Internet Broadway Database
- Christopher Lloyd at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- Christopher Lloyd at the TCM Movie Database
- Christopher Lloyd at AllMovie