Christian Slater Biography

Actor

Christian Slater made a splash early in his screen career as a rebellious youth in Heathers (1989) and Pump Up the Volume (1990). A professional actor since childhood, his early film roles as an adult included The Name of the Rose (1986, starring Sean Connery) and Francis Ford Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dreams (1988, starring Jeff Bridges). Then his new-generation version of Jack Nicholson in Heathers -- opposite rising star Winona Ryder -- earned Slater rave reviews and made him a star. He proved a capable leading man and starred in movies such as Mobsters (1991, with Patrick Dempsey), True Romance (1993, written by Quentin Tarantino) and Murder in the First (1995, with Kevin Bacon). By the late 1990s he was even having a go at being an action hero, in Broken Arrow (1996, with John Travolta) and Hard Rain (1998, with Morgan Freeman). Throughout his movie career Slater has been a favorite of the gossip sheets, thanks to misadventures including thrown punches, substance abuse, domestic squabbles, sexual harassment charges and, in late 2005, a fall from the roof during a Paris Hilton party. His off-screen shenanigans slowed his career somewhat, but he rebounded with a well-received performance in He Was A Quiet Man (2007, with Elisha Cuthbert) and a TV series for 2008, My Own Worst Enemy.

Extra credit: In 2004 he opened a three-month run in London of a production of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in a role made famous on screen by Jack Nicholson.