William James Remar (born December 31 1953) is an American actor. He has appeared in 98 different media projects, either movies, video games or TV shows. He is perhaps most familiar as Richard, the on-off tycoon boyfriend of Kim Cattrall's character in Sex and the City and as a homicidal maniac in the early 80's thriller / comedy 48 Hrs.
Remar was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Largely due to his somewhat intimidating physical appearance Remar has spent the majority of his film career playing villains. He is known for his roles as the aggressively violent character Ajax in the 1979 cult film The Warriors, as the murdering sociopath Albert Ganz in the 1982 Eddie Murphy hit 48 Hrs. and as real-life 30s-era gangster Dutch Schultz in the 1984 film The Cotton Club. He also starred in the 1980 film Windwalker as the young Windwalker. In 1996, he played one of the main bad guys in Paramount's big budget action movie The Phantom, where he did his best to stop Billy Zane's superhero. In what would have been one of his very few major non-villain film roles, Remar was originally cast as Corporal Dwayne Hicks in the 1986 blockbuster hit sequel Aliens. However he was fired over "creative differences" by director James Cameron only a few days after filming began and replaced with Cameron-favorite actor Michael Biehn. Remar can still be seen in the film during a shot where the Marines are walking through the complex, but the audience cannot tell it's him because his back is to the camera and he is in full costume.
Other notable films include Fear X, Boys on the Side, Hellraiser: Inferno, Deadlock, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, Blade: Trinity, 2 Fast 2 Furious, The Girl Next Door and in 1998 he played the policeman that kept following the woman around in Psycho, he was also the star of the 1986 film Quiet Cool. He portrayed the character of Raiden in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, the sequel to the 1995 movie adaptation of Mortal Kombat, taking the role over from Christopher Lambert.
Remar's guest appearances range from Hill Street Blues, Sex and the City, Third Watch, Justice League Unlimited and Battlestar Galactica. He also starred as Tiny Bellows on the short-lived TV series, The Huntress. Since 2006, he has co-starred in Dexter on Showtime; James was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Dexter Morgan's adoptive father. James also has a recurring guest role in Jericho on CBS.
Remar is married and has two children.
Rugged, intense character player with average-guy good looks and a slightly squinty stare, adept at vicious, sometimes psychopathic roles. Remar gained recognition as a punk who gets chained to a park bench by a woman cop in his second film, Warriors, The (1979). That same year he garnered acclaim on Broadway as Richard Gere's lover in the concentration camp drama "Bent". Remar subsequently kept busy primarily in features, playing gangster Dutch Schultz in Francis Ford Coppola's Cotton Club, The (1984), one of the Neanderthals in Clan of the Cave Bear, The (1986), and an experienced military officer who doubts the power of Shakespeare in Renaissance Man (1994). Remar has occasionally garnered roles which highlight a more vulnerable side, such as his guitarist who gets a break in the Oscar-winning short, Session Man (1991) (TV) or his artist who falls in love with a gargoyle come to life in the best segment of the horror anthology, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990). Remar is, in fact, still best known for his galvanizing performances as a homicidal maniac escaped from prison in 48 Hrs. (1982) and as a no-nonsense cop in Drugstore Cowboy (1989). Remar sent up some of his earlier roles in the half-baked spoof Fatal Instinct (1993), as a killer released from prison out to get Armand Assante.
