With an acting career spanning over five decades, Tom Atkins is one of the hardest working, most versatile performers in showbiz. The type of man's man we just don't see much of these days, Tom was born November 13, 1935 in Pittsburgh, PA, which might explain his steely eyes. While he's known for playing rugged, hard-boiled characters, as a child, he was a bit of a nerd who loved horror and sci-fi films. Atkins graduated from Duquesne University where he was a member of the Gamma Phi Fraternity, then studied and graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1967. Atkins made his big screen debut in The Detective (1968), but really hit it big when he played Lt. Tom Sullivan in the TV version of Serpico and Lt. Diehl on The Rockford Files. File him under H for hard working, he's gone on to appear in over 80 films and television shows, most famously playing Liberty Island Security Control Commander Rehme in Escape from New York (1981), Murtaughs drug smuggling Vietnam war buddy Michael Hunsaker in Lethal Weapon (1987), and Frank McCrae in Maniac Cop (1988). Don't call us a manaic but we wish we could cop a feel of Tom! Witch of those is our favorite? Actually, none of them. Our best beloved Tom Atkins flick is Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982). More like Hallo-weiner, at one point in the often belittled, Michael Myers-less third movie in the franchise, at one point Tom rolls out of bed, and we see his ass before he puts on a pair of pants. Everytime we watch it beomces the season of giving....ourselves a handy to that handsome man! Tom never stopped working. He reprised his Rockford role in The Rockford Files: If the Frame Fits... (1996), played Mayor Wilson Lowen on Oz, and most recently hit the Beantown scene as Joe Congemi on City on a Hill. Hope he keeps working. Our man meat can't get enough of the Tom Atkins diet!
