Years active 1973–2001 | Name Joseph Bottoms Role Actor | |
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Spouse Dianna Diels (m. 1994–2007) Siblings Sam Bottoms, Timothy Bottoms, Ben Bottoms Parents Betty Bottoms, James A. Bottoms Nephews Benton Bottoms, Bartholomew Bottoms, William Bottoms Movies and TV shows Similar People | ||
Christine Amor with Joseph Bottoms in 'High Rolling in a Hot Corvette'
Joseph Bottoms (born April 22, 1954) is an American actor who won the 1975 Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actor for his role in The Dove. He is also perhaps best known for his roles in the television mini-series Holocaust and Disney's The Black Hole.
Contents
- Christine Amor with Joseph Bottoms in High Rolling in a Hot Corvette
- Career
- Personal life
- Filmography
- References
Career
Bottoms made his screen debut in the ABC television movie Trouble Comes to Town. A year later he played the role of Robin Lee Graham, in The Dove, a real-life story about a teenager sailor's voyage around the world. Bottoms won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor, joining a host of other actors that have won the award such as Richard Burton, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight and later Ben Kingsley.
In the 1978 mini-series Holocaust, he starred as Rudi Weiss, a German Jew who joins the Jewish partisans. The series was well-received, winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries.
The German Jews were the most assimilated in Europe. They were vital to Germany's culture—which, indeed, has never recovered from their extinction. They couldn't see they were hated in direct proportion to their learning, vitality and success. The aridity of the Nazi mind was the biggest poser the authors had to face. In creating Erik Dorff they went some way towards overcoming it. Played with spellbinding creepiness by Michael Moriarty, Erik spoke his murderous euphemisms in a voice as juiceless as Hitler's prose or Speer's architecture. Hitler's dream of the racially pure future was of an abstract landscape tended by chain-gangs of shadows and crisscrossed with highways bearing truckloads of Aryans endlessly speeding to somewhere undefined. Dorff sounded just like that: his dead mackerel eyes were dully alight with a limitless vision of banality.
A year later he starred in The Black Hole, a science fiction film that grossed over $35 million at the US box office. In 1981, he made his Broadway debut in Fifth of July. The play made its Broadway debut at the New Apollo Theatre on November 5, 1980, directed by Mason with Daniels reprising the role of Jed, Christopher Reeve as Ken and Swoosie Kurtz as Gwen. Replacement actors for the role of Ken included Richard Thomas, Michael O'Keefe, Timothy Bottoms, and his brother Joseph Bottoms. Laraine Newman replaced Kurtz as Gwen. Kathy Bates was also a replacement in the role of June.
In 1984 he starred alongside Kirstie Alley in Blind Date. Between 1985–1986, he was a series regular on the soap opera, Santa Barbara. In 1990 he began a guest arc on the Canadian television series, Street Legal. In 1991 he played the second Cal Winters in the soap opera, Days of Our Lives. In 1998 he was cast as a series regular in The Net.
His latest screen appearance was in 1999 in the TV series, V.I.P..
Personal life
Bottoms was born in Santa Barbara, California, and is the second son of sculptor James "Bud" Bottoms and Betty (née Chapman). He is the brother of actors Timothy Bottoms, Sam Bottoms, and Ben Bottoms. Bottoms has been married twice and twice divorced. Since 1999, Bottoms has been running the Bottoms Art Galleries in Santa Barbara that also includes his father's sculptures.