mark linn-baker’s (the actor) life with interesting articles about him and some of his roles.
A few years before Back to the Future, Mark Linn-Baker had a recurring role in Perfect Strangers as Larry’s friend Murray, who has a crush on Balki’s sister. He was also in an episode of Wizards and Warriors, which was produced by Michael Eisner.
Mark Linn-Baker has since gone on to appear in many movies and television shows, including My Favorite Year, Doogie Howser M.D., American Presidents, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and others.
The last movie that Mark Linn-Baker appeared in is Assassination of a High School President (2008).
In 2009, he appeared on 30 Rock as Jack Donaghy’s former acting teacher Lennie Wosniak. In the episode, Jack accidentally kills Lennie’s dog during a drunken bender.
The Actor is the blog of actor Mark Linn-Baker. It began in 2008 and was updated through 2011.
Mark has starred in numerous films, plays and television shows, including My Favorite Year (with Peter O’Toole), Planes Trains & Automobiles (with Steve Martin), A Mighty Wind (Christopher Guest), Manhattan (Woody Allen), The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan), Love & Money (James Toback), Perfect Strangers (ABC) and many more. He wrote and directed the film Life Without Dick, starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Harry Connick Jr.
In the theater he performed in the original production of Crimes of The Heart in New York and Los Angeles, as well as the Broadway productions of Beyond Therapy and Prelude to a Kiss. He also appeared Off-Broadway in London Suite, with Julie Hagerty; as George Gibbs in Our Town at Playwrights Horizons; as Francis Flute in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Circle In The Square; and on Broadway as Lennie in Of Mice And Men with Gary Sinise.
He is currently writing a series of short comic pieces about his life entitled “The Actor.”
Mark Linn-Baker (born June 17, 1954) is an American actor and director best known for his role as Larry Appleton in the sitcom Perfect Strangers.
He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, where he attended John Burroughs School.[1] He graduated from Wesleyan University with a BFA in Theatre. While at Wesleyan he befriended fellow classmate Christopher Guest and performed with the Puppetsburg Players, a comedy-variety troupe.
He later moved to New York City where he worked off-Broadway and appeared on Broadway in several productions. Perhaps his most notable stage work was as Pippin in the 1981 revival of Pippin staged by Bob Fosse at the Imperial Theatre (New York City). He played a supporting role in the film My Favorite Year.
Mark Linn-Baker is an actor and director who has worked in the theater, movies, and television. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri on June 17, 1954. He was raised in Connecticut. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Southern Methodist University in Texas in 1976.
After graduating from SMU he went to New York City where he studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater from 1976 to 1978 with acting teacher Sanford Meisner. After completing his studies at the Neighborhood Playhouse Mr. Linn-Baker began working as an actor both on stage and on film.
In the theater Mr. Linn-Baker has acted on Broadway and Off-Broadway as well as in regional theaters throughout the United States and Europe. In New York he has appeared at Lincoln Center, The Public Theater, Second Stage, Primary Stages, Manhattan Theatre Club, The Roundabout Theatre Company, The Metropolitan Opera House (in a production of John Corigliano’s opera “The Ghosts of Versailles”), and many others.
He has also been active as a director in theater with productions that include “Measure for Measure” (Cleveland Shakespeare Festival), “A Midsummer Night
Mark Linn-Baker is an American actor best known for his role as aspiring young writer Larry Appleton in the ABC television sitcom Perfect Strangers (1986–93) and as the bumbling yet good-natured cousin, also named Larry, of Peter O’Toole’s character in My Favorite Year (1982).
He has appeared in a number of movies, including Funny Farm (1988), Surviving Eden (2004), Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), The Invention of Lying (2009), and How I Met Your Mother (2005–14). He played himself on the short-lived series Action in 1999. In 2012 he appeared in two episodes of 30 Rock.
In 1984, he directed Wonderland, a musical adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, which was presented at the New York Shakespeare Festival. In 2013, he directed a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Old Globe Theatre.
Linn-Baker was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to businessman Lawrence Baker and Frances Fitzgerald Baker. His father died when Mark was four years old. He graduated from Yale University with a BFA degree in 1976. His half-brother is noted professor James Q. Wilson.
I am prompted to do this a little early because I was looking at the blog stats and someone had found this site by searching for “george mcfly actor.” That would be me. I was George McFly in Back to the Future. It turns out that there are a lot of fans out there who love the movie, and occasionally they find this blog.
I guess I should start with an apology. The blog is not devoted exclusively to George McFly, or Back to the Future, or me. In fact it’s not devoted exclusively to anything–I put up all kinds of articles about all kinds of things and subjects. Some of them are serious, some are funny. Some are both. Some are neither. They are not written with any particular audience in mind except me. If that’s what you came here for, I’m sorry you’re disappointed. If you decide to read on, though, I hope you’ll enjoy it and come back again from time to time as new stuff gets posted (sometimes daily, sometimes once a month or even less).
The first thing to say about George McFly is that he was a character in a screenplay who changed quite a bit during the process of casting and shooting the picture. There were several actors who had a
You can find the “Biff” character as written in the script here. That’s what Biff was supposed to be like. But Thomas F. Wilson changed all that, and made the character so much more interesting than he was in the original version of the screenplay.
It’s interesting to me how a role can be transformed by an actor. Many actors are really good at taking a role that is flat on the page, and by their performance, adding dimensions to it that were never there before. Tom Wilson has done that with many roles he has played over his career, one of them being Biff Tannen in Back To The Future.
And if you ever get to meet him at a convention or something, make sure you ask him to do his “I’m your density” line from BTTF part 2! He does it very well!