Biography
Brad Dourif carved out a career as an offbeat supporting player by populating screen after screen with deranged killers, unstable outsiders, and other haunted figures in modern horror and science-fiction productions. Born in Huntington, West Virginia on March 18, 1950, he launched his professional work once college ended, sharpening his technique through a three-year residency at New York’s Circle Repertory under the guidance of Sanford Meisner. Director Milos Forman noticed him during an off-Broadway run of When You Comin’ Back, Red Rider? and promptly gave him a part in the 1975 screen version of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His portrayal of a suicidal adolescent committed to an institution ranked among the most striking first performances anyone could recall, bringing a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination; at the same time the role locked him into eccentric, off-kilter character parts he would never fully escape.
Two years passed before he returned to the screen, this time co-starring in the 1977 West German feature Gruppenbild mit Dame. His next prominent appearance arrived in Irvin Kershner’s 1978 thriller The Eyes of Laura Mars, followed by a memorable lead performance as a psychologically wounded veteran in John Huston’s Wise Blood. After a supporting turn in the 1980 television movie Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, he joined the sprawling cast of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, the initial entry in a series of costly misfires that also included Milos Forman’s Ragtime and David Lynch’s Dune. Smaller-scale films occupied him for a stretch until he again worked with Lynch, this time in a brief capacity on the 1986 classic Blue Velvet. Comparable opportunities remained scarce, so he instead supplied the voice of the murderous doll Chucky throughout the Child’s Play franchise. Later years brought occasional higher-profile assignments—Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning in 1988, Ken Loach’s Hidden Agenda in 1990, and Hanif Kureishi’s London Kills Me in 1991—yet the bulk of his output stayed within economical genre pictures; he also made numerous television guest appearances on series such as The X-Files, Millennium, and Star Trek: Voyager.
Two years passed before he returned to the screen, this time co-starring in the 1977 West German feature Gruppenbild mit Dame. His next prominent appearance arrived in Irvin Kershner’s 1978 thriller The Eyes of Laura Mars, followed by a memorable lead performance as a psychologically wounded veteran in John Huston’s Wise Blood. After a supporting turn in the 1980 television movie Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, he joined the sprawling cast of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, the initial entry in a series of costly misfires that also included Milos Forman’s Ragtime and David Lynch’s Dune. Smaller-scale films occupied him for a stretch until he again worked with Lynch, this time in a brief capacity on the 1986 classic Blue Velvet. Comparable opportunities remained scarce, so he instead supplied the voice of the murderous doll Chucky throughout the Child’s Play franchise. Later years brought occasional higher-profile assignments—Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning in 1988, Ken Loach’s Hidden Agenda in 1990, and Hanif Kureishi’s London Kills Me in 1991—yet the bulk of his output stayed within economical genre pictures; he also made numerous television guest appearances on series such as The X-Files, Millennium, and Star Trek: Voyager.