Dirk Benedict

About Dirk Benedict

Dirk Benedict was born in Montana on March 1st, 1945. He was raised in the country, far away from anything connected with movies or acting. He gathered his first experiences in acting (on a dare) in a college production of "Showboat" where he got the main part. His father, a lawyer, died when Dirk was 18, which was hard for him to take. While working on Georgia, Georgia (1972) in Sweden, he made the first contact with a macrobiotic diet and changed his eating habits drastically. He was 26 at that time. A few years later, doctors found that he had cancer of the prostate. He refused to accept the usual treatment and moved away to a secluded cottage. Dirk managed to cure himself from cancer by following the rules of his macrobiotic diet. When he got his part as "Starbuck" in Battlestar Galactica (1978), the doctors stated that he was in good health. Dirk's main successes were "Battlestar Galactica" and The A-Team (1983) in which he played "Templeton - The Face - Peck". He was formerly married to actress Toni Hudson and has two sons (George and Roland).::Sonja Horstmann
It's a long way from the vastness of Montana's Big Sky country to the vastness of outer space, but Dirk Benedict is taking the transition in stride. The actor's hometown of White Sulphur Springs, Montana, was so small that it lacked a television station. White Sulphur Springs, MT did have a motion picture theater! Benedict became the co-star in MCA TV's Battlestar Galactica (1978) as a skirt-chasing, fun-loving combat pilot aboard an embattled spaceship in a far-off galaxy.It was at Whitman College, in Walla Walla, Washington, that Dirk became interested in acting. During his freshman year, he accepted a dare to audition for the Spring musical and won the lead role of "Gaylord Ravenal" in "Showboat". The next three years were filled with many more musical productions. Upon graduation, Benedict began a two-year training program under John Fernald, who had headed London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London for fifteen years. He then played repertory theatre in Seattle and in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he played such roles as "Edmund" in "King Lear", "Tarleton" in "Misalliance", "Ensign Pulver" in "Mister Roberts" and the lead in Neil Simon's "Star-Spangled Girl".Meanwhile, Benedict maintained an active interest in music and formed a Dixieland Jazz Band in Seattle. Prior to their debut, he visited New York to meet an agent recommended by his college professor. Benedict never made it back to Seattle. The agent sent him to an audition which resulted in a co-starring role with Diana Rigg and Keith Michell in "Abelard and Heloise", first on Broadway, then in Los Angeles. Two weeks after the show closed on Broadway, he was winging across the Atlantic to Sweden for his first movie, Georgia, Georgia (1972) in which he co-starred with the late Diana Sands. This film about draft resisters, shot entirely in Sweden, was written by the well known writer Maya Angelou. In Sweden, Benedict lost his heart to Miss Sweden, discovered Akvavit and began a new way of eating based on whole grains and vegetables. On his return to New York, he replaced Keir Dullea in "Butterflies Are Free" on Broadway where he worked with the ever-young Gloria Swanson, as his mother. When the New York run ended, he received an offer to repeat his performance in Hawaii, opposite Barbara Rush. While there, he appeared as a guest on Hawaii Five-O (1968). The producers of a psyc...

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Charlie's Christmas Wish - Unwrapping on DVD, Digital, and On Demand November 10 from Lionsgate

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