Keir Dullea

Tall, slim, remote and boyishly handsome, one of Keir Dullea's most arresting features is his pale blue eyes, which featured in a number of watershed films of the 1960s. His major breakthrough (providing him legendary status) was the starring role as astronaut Dave Bowman in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. After that, he persevered quite well on T.V. and (especially) the stage in a career now surpassing five decades. Dullea, who was born in Cleveland, Ohio, is the son of two book-store owners, and he was raised in New York's Greenwich Village section. He graduated from George School in Pennsylvania and attended both Rutgers and San Francisco State before deciding to pursue summer stock and regional theatre. Attending the Neighborhood Playhouse, he made his New York City acting debut in a production of "Sticks and Bones" in 1956. His first big break came with the pilot program of the Route 66 (1960) series, and he proceeded to find other TV roles in Naked City (1958), Checkmat