David Ackroyd

Veteran stage and TV actor David Ackroyd was born on May 30, 1940 in Orange, New Jersey, the son of Arthur, an insurance adjuster, and Charlotte (nee Henderson) Ackroyd. He studied at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania where he received his BA in 1962 as a ROTC student. Following his graduation he appeared in community theater productions while serving in Arizona with the military. He then focused on the arts as a career after enrolling at the Yale Drama School where he earned his Masters of Fine Arts in 1968. Ackroyd garnered early credits at Yale Repertory Theatre (for three seasons) and Williamstown Theatre Festival (for six seasons). He also found challenging and varied stage work outside the U.S., in Taiwan, Russia, Poland, Germany, France, and the former Czechoslovakia. Dark and handsome, he extended his stage career onscreen in the early 1970s, beginning with the daytime soap operas The Secret Storm (1954) and Another World (1964). He progressed to prime-time work as Gary Ewin