Peter MacNicol (born April 10, 1954 in Dallas, Texas) is an Emmy Award winning American actor.
MacNicol was raised in Texas as the youngest of five children. MacNicol began his career studying at the University of Dallas and continued at the University of Minnesota. While in Minnesota, he performed in two seasons at the Guthrie Theater. A New York talent agent spotted him and told him to make a move to Manhattan. Shortly thereafter, he was cast in the off-Broadway play, Crimes of the Heart. The production eventually moved to Broadway, and MacNicol won the Theatre World Award. It was also during this production that a casting agent noticed him and called him in to read for his eventual role in Sophie's Choice.
In 1987, he starred in the Trinity Repertory Company's original production of the stage adaptation of "All the King's Men." This adaptation was developed with the consultation of the author himself.
Among his other stage credits is the Broadway production of Black Comedy/White Lies, MacNicol also has further extensive classical repertory theater background, including the New York Shakespeare Festival in which he played title roles in Richard II and Romeo and Juliet, and appeared in Twelfth Night, Rum and Coke and Found a Peanut.
MacNicol's past work demonstrates the broad dramatic and comedic spectrum of his talent. On film, he has appeared as the naive Southern writer who fell in love with Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice; the strange museum curator in Ghostbusters II and the summer camp director in Addams Family Values. Other film credits include HouseSitter and American Blue Note.
MacNicol is best known among television viewers for his Ally McBeal performance as eccentric attorney John Cage, for which he won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2001. He currently stars in the drama NUMB3RS as physicist Dr. Larry Fleinhardt, and had a popular role as Tom Lennox in the sixth season of the hit Fox show 24. MacNicol has begun to record as Doctor Octopus for the first season of The Spectacular Spider-Man, which will premiere on The CW in late 2007 or early 2008. In addition, this year Peter has written a script entitled Salvation on Sand Mountain and is attached to the project as an executive producer and director.
MacNicol joined the picket line at FOX Studios in support of the Writers Guild of America strike and participated in the Nov. 9th rally.
He currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife of 20 years who runs The Corie Williams Scholarship Fund, a non-profit foundation that provides scholarships for inner-city children in Los Angeles.
Listed as one of twelve "Promising New actors of 1981" in John Willis' Screen World, Vol. 33.
His wife, Marsue, runs a not-for-profit foundation that helps inner-city children in Los Angeles.
