John C. Reilly life and biography

John C. Reilly is an American film and theater actor, singer, and comedian. Debuting in Casualties of War in 1989, he is one of several actors whose careers were launched by Brian De Palma. To date, he has appeared in more than fifty films, including three separate films in 2002, each of which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Chicago and a Grammy Award for the song "Walk Hard", which he performed in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

Reilly was born in Chicago, Illinois, the fifth of six children of an Irish father and a Lithuanian mother. His father, John Reilly, Sr., ran an industrial linen supply company. Reilly was raised Roman Catholic and attended Brother Rice High School, a Catholic school. He is an alumnus of DePaul University in Chicago.

With a homely mug, lumbering gait and unruly mop of curly hair tailor-made for offbeat character work, John C. Reilly played a host of seamy characters to great effect over the years. Of late, however, he has defied the odds by drawing in the ladies with his touching "common man" portrayals of lovable, good-natured schlepps. The fifth of six children born to an Irish father and Lithuanian mother, Reilly was brought up on Chicago's tough Southwest territory. On the amateur stage from age eight, he trained at the Goodman School of Drama and eventually became a member of Chicago's renowned Steppenwolf Theatre. His film break came with a small role in the Vietnam War drama Casualties of War (1989), wherein Brian De Palma liked his work so much during the early stages that he recast him in a major role by the start of shooting as a soldier bent on rape. Reilly gained momentum throughout the 1990s and showed his dazzling stretch of talent in such films as Days of Thunder (1990), Shadows and Fog (1991), What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and The River Wild (1994). He became a major stock player in director Paul Thomas Anderson's films, while finding some of his best roles in Hard Eight (1996) as a compulsive gambler, Boogie Nights (1997) in which he played a narcissistic porn star, and in Magnolia (1999) as a compassionate policeman. He went on to earn further critical points for his role of the soldier sent to the front lines in Terrence Malick's war epic The Thin Red Line (1998). On stage, Reilly has wowed audiences in "The Grapes of Wrath" on Broadway, "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Othello" at Steppenwolf, and earned an Outer Critics Circle Award and Tony nomination for "True West" alongside another impeccable character player Philip Seymour Hoffman. Reilly finally received the film recognition he deserved in 2002 with a slew of choice, high-profile parts in The Hours (2002), The Good Girl (2002), Gangs of New York (2002), and especially Chicago (2002) as the put-upon husband, Amos Hart, who is played for a patsy by murderous wife Roxie (Renée Zellweger). For this last part, he received both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for best supporting actor. Though he didn't win either, it's only a matter a time for this talented thespian who can easily switch from being a dream of a nice guy to your worst nightmare on any given day. Reilly is married to producer Alison Dickey.

Filmography:

1997: Boogie Nights
1999: Magnolia
2001: The Anniversary Party
2002: The Good Girl; Gangs of New York; Chicago; The Hours
2004: The Aviator
2007: Year of the Dog; Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
2010: Cyrus

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