Category: All About Newton

Matt Damon, Bette Davis, Matt LeBlanc, Amy Poehler, John Krasinski and pal B. J. Novak, Jack Lemmon, Leonard Nimoy, Christopher Lloyd and more, all spent time living in Newton, Massachusetts. Many were even born and raised here. Who knew?! Did I leave anyone out? Please help me out if I forgot someone! Thanks!

p.s. Most of the info on each actor is from Wikipedia.

Chopra was born in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand to Ashok Chopra and Madhu Akhauri, both physicians by profession. Chopra spent her childhood in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh; Newton, Massachusetts; and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Her father was in the army and thus her family moved quite frequently. Her father hailed from a family of Punjabi origin, settled in Bareilly and her mother comes from a family settled in Jamshedpur. She was Miss World 2000 and an actress in India.

Louis C. K.

Upon moving from Mexico to Boston, Massachusetts, C.K. discovered he wanted to become a writer and comedian, citing Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin as some of his influences. When he was about 10, his parents divorced, so he and his three siblings were raised by their single mother in Newton, Massachusetts. His primary reason for aspiring to produce movies and television was his mother: “I remember thinking in fifth grade, ‘I have to get inside that box and make this shit better’… because she deserves this.”

Matt Damon

Matt Damon was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Kent Telfer Damon, a stockbroker, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an early childhood education professor at Lesley University.Damon is of Scottish, English, Finnish, and Swedish ancestry, and is a distant cousin of actors Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck. He has a brother, Kyle, who is an accomplished sculptor and artist. He and his family moved to Newton and lived there for two years.

Bette Davis

Ruth Elizabeth “Bette” Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, although her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.

After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, but her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances. In 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract and although she lost a well-publicized legal case, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema’s most celebrated leading ladies, known for her forceful and intense style. Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative, and confrontations with studio executives, film directors and costars were often reported. Her forthright manner, clipped vocal style and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona which has often been imitated and satirized.

Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue 10 Academy Award nominations for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Her career went through several periods of eclipse, and she admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. Married four times, she was once widowed and thrice divorced, and raised her children as a single parent. Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death frombreast cancer, with more than 100 films, television and theater roles to her credit. In 1999, Davis was placed second, after Katharine Hepburn, on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest female stars of all time.

Michael Delaney

Born December 6, 1966 in Newton, Massachusetts, USA. Michael Delaney has been acting, writing and directing comedy in NYC for 20 years. He is a founding member of The Swarm, The Stepfathers, and Delaney & Dave who won the 2006 Nightlife Award for best comedy group. Acting credits include The Other Guys, Big Lake, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Will Ferrell’s You’re Welcome America – A Final Night With George W. Bush, Late Night With Conan O’Brien, Important Things With Demitri Martin, ONN, The Onion Movie, SNL and Human Giant. Michael has directed countless improvised and scripted shows including Naked Babies, Respecto, and Casey Wilson & June Rafael’s Rode Hard and Put Away Wet for the USCAF in Aspen. Michael has written for The Onion News Network and was head writer for The Edge. He has taught at UCB since 1999 in long form improv and sketch comedy writing, and is an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s film department.

Scott DeFreitas

Born September 9, 1969 in Newton, Massachusetts, USA.  He is the oldest of four children. He has three brothers. His parents were divorced when he was 17 and he’s very close to his mother, Gail. S

Anne Dudek

Dudek was born and raised in Greater Boston in the suburb Newton, and attended Northwestern University. She is married to artist Matthew Heller, with whom she has a son, Akiva, born on December 14, 2008.  She is currently expecting her second child.

Kathryn Erbe

Erbe was born the oldest of three children in Newton, Massachusetts. Her mother, Elisabeth Magnarelli, was a vice-president of a Boston management firm, and her father, Dr. Richard Erbe, is an internist at the University at Buffalo subspecialized as a medical geneticist.

Dan Harris

Dan Harris (born July 26, 1971) is a correspondent for ABC News and the co-anchor for the weekend edition of Good Morning America.

Jesse Heiman

Jesse Heiman was born in Boston on May 23, 1978 and lived in Boston until 1989. He has appeared several times on the TV show “Do Over” which takes place in Newton, Massachusetts, which also happens to be the town he was born in and lived in from 1978-1989. His first major role was in American Pie 2, first speaking role on the short lived television show “Maybe It’s Me.”

Marin Hinkle

Marin Elizabeth Hinkle (born March 23, 1966) is a American actress, perhaps best known for playing the role of Judith Harper-Melnick, Alan Harper’s ex-wife on the hit series Two and a Half Men and her role as Judy Brooks the sister of the series lead Lily Manning on Once and Again.

John Krasinski

Krasinski was born in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb outside of Boston, the son of a Polish-American father, internist Dr. Ronald Krasinski, and an Irish-American mother, Mary Clare (née Doyle). He has two older brothers, Kevin and Paul, and was raised Roman Catholic in Newton. Krasinski was friends with his Office costar, B. J. Novak, while growing up in Newton.

Ben Kurland

Ben Kurland (born May 1, 1984) is an American actor. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts to parents Jim and Robyne Kurland. He and his older brother Zack Kurland grew up in Newton, Massachusetts.

Matt LeBlanc

Matt LeBlanc was born on 25 July 1967 in Newton, Massachussetts, to an Italian mother and a father of mixed Irish, English, Dutch and French ancestry. After graduating from high school, he spent some time as a photo model in Florida before moving to New York where he took drama classes. After a few small roles on stage and on TV, he became famous for his role as Joey in “Friends” (1994), and in a less successful spin-off, “Joey” (2004).

Jack Lemmon

Jack Lemmon’s father was the president of a doughnut company. Jack attended Ward Elementary near his Newton, MA home. At age 9 he was sent to Rivers Country Day School, then located in nearby Brookline. After RCDS, he went to high school at Phillips Andover Academy. Jack was a member of the Harvard class of 1947, where he was in Navy ROTC and the Dramatic Club. After service as a Navy ensign, he worked in a beer hall (playing piano), on radio, off Broadway, TV andBroadway. His movie debut was with Judy Holliday in It Should Happen to You (1954). He won Best Supporting Actor as Ensign Pulver inMister Roberts (1955). He received nominations in comedy (Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960)) and drama (Days of Wine and Roses (1962), The China Syndrome (1979), Tribute (1980) and Missing (1982)). He won the Best Actor Oscar for Save the Tiger (1973) and the Cannes Best Actor award for “Syndrome” and “Missing”. He made his debut as a director with Kotch (1971) and in 1985 on Broadway in “Long Day’s Journey into Night”. In 1988 he received the Life Achievement Award of the American Film Institute.

Christopher Lloyd

Lloyd was born in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Samuel R. Lloyd, a lawyer, and his wife Ruth (née Lapham), a singer and sister of San Francisco mayor Roger Lapham.  His maternal grandfather, Lewis Lapham, was one of the founders of theTexaco oil company, and Lloyd is also a descendant of Mayflower passenger John Howland. Lloyd attended the Fessenden School, a preparatory school in Newton, Massachusetts. Lloyd was raised in New Canaan, Connecticut and Westport, Connecticut, where he graduated from Staples High School in 1958. His mother, an heiress to the Lapham-Texaco oil fortune, donated her family’s ancestral home, Waveny Park, to the town of New Canaan.

Florencia Lozano

Florencia Lozano is an American actress. She has starred as character Téa Delgado on the daytime series One Life to Live, often receiving praise for the portrayal, as the character emerged as one of the genre’s most prominent heroines. 

Hugh McChord

Hugh McChord was born in Newton, Massachusetts and spent the first half of his life on the East Coast which would help explain his continued love for the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and Bruins. His love of the theater began at Hingham High School where he was part of the Drama Club and a member of the Thespians. He continued his acting education by appearing in a number of independent and school film productions at Emerson College where he graduated in 1980 with a degree in Mass Communications. It was also there that he met a good friend who would be instrumental in furthering his eventual career in television, Joe Rocco. After graduation Joe had taken the job of Sports Anchor at KMPH in Fresno, California and it was Joe who convinced Hugh to move west and give local television news a shot. Shortly after moving in 1983, Hugh was hired as a staff news photographer. In 1985 Hugh moved up the ladder to Sacramento as initially a news editor and then within a couple of years, news photographer. It was in Sacramento that Hugh resumed his acting by enrolling in the Actors Workshop which resulted in an ELLY Nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Mick in the play “Night Baseball” directed by Ed Claudio. It was also in Sacramento that Hugh met Joe Carnahan who was looking for actors for his first movie, Blood Guts Bullets & Octane. Hugh landed the role of the hit man, Mr. Reich. The movie was eventually picked up by Lionsgate after being accepted into the Sundance Film Festival. Joe has since gone on to do a number of Hollywood blockbusters including Narc and Smokin’ Aces. After that Hugh landed prominent roles in a number of independent movies including Fugitive Hunter in 2005, Elsa Letterseed in 2006 and Andre: Heart of the Giant in 2008. Hugh has also continued his camera work. Since leaving KXTV in 1997 Hugh was director of photography on the nationally syndicated news feature, The Legal Edge, which during its ten plus year run garnered two EMMY’s for Hugh’s camera work and for the show. In 2002 Hugh relocated to Los Angeles to work as a staff shooter on the show Celebrity Justice which ended production in 2005. Around the same time Hugh bought a complete camera package and after the show’s end entered the freelance world full-time. In 2004 Hugh met the love of his life Karine. They welcomed their daughter, Jaz, into the world in February of 2005.

Robert Morse

Morse was born on May 18, 1931 in Newton, Massachusetts. After serving in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War, Morse appeared on Broadway as an actor. With that impish, gap-toothed grin, nervous bundle of energy Robert Morse could never be contained long enough to become a film star. The live stage would be his calling. He made his debut with the musical “On the Town” in 1949, and trained with Lee Strasberg before making his inauspicious film debut in The Proud and Profane (1956) but movie offers were few. Instead he brightened up the lights of Broadway as Barnaby Tucker in “The Matchmaker (and in the film version of The Matchmaker (1958)), in “Say, Darling” (Tony nomination in 1958), “Take Me Along” (Tony nomination in 1959) and his best known role as the ever-ambitious J. Pierpont Finch in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” in which he finally won the Tony in 1961 while singing his signature song “I Believe in You” to himself in the mirror. He took that role to film six years later.

Olga Nardone

Olga C. Nardone (June 8, 1921 – September 24, 2010) was an actress and one of the last surviving Munchkins from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, in which she played a member of the Lullaby League. She was known as Little Olga and princess Olga]] and was one of the smallest of the Wizard of Oz Munchkins, standing at just 3 foot 4 inches tall. The fact that she had done ballet solos in vaudeville helped get her the part. She died on September 24, 2010 in Nonantum, Massachusetts of natural causes, at the age of 89.

Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Simon Nimoy (born March 26, 1931) is an American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer. Nimoy’s most famous role is that of Spock in the original Star Trek series (1966–1969), multiple films, television and video game sequels.

Nimoy began his career in his early twenties, teaching acting classes in Hollywood and making minor film and television appearances through the 1950s, as well as playing the title role in Kid Monk Baroni. In 1953, he served in the United States Army. In 1965, he made his first appearance in the rejected Star Trek pilot, “The Cage”, and would go on to play the character of Mr. Spock until 1969, followed by seven further feature films and a number of guest slots in various sequels. His character of Spock generated a significant cultural impact and three Emmy Award nominations; TV Guide named Spock one of the 50 greatest TV characters. Nimoy also had a recurring role in Mission: Impossible and a narrating role in Civilization IV, as well as several well-received stage appearances.

B. J. Novak

Novak was born and raised in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of Linda (née Manaly) and William Novak. His father has ghostwritten memoirs for Nancy Reagan, Lee Iacocca, and others. Novak’s family is Jewish; his father co-edited The Big Book of Jewish Humor and his parents also established a Jewish matchmaking service. Novak has two younger brothers, Jesse, an electronic music producer, and Lev, an undergraduate student at Tufts University. He attended Newton South High School with future Office costar John Krasinski, and they graduated in 1997. Novak attended Harvard University, where he worked for the Harvard Lampoon and majored in English and Spanish literature after writing a thesis on Hollywood responses to Shakespeare. In addition to the Lampoon, he occasionally staged and performed in a variety show called The B.J. Show with fellow Harvard student B. J. Averell. Novak wrote his honors thesis on the films of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

John O’Leary

Born  May 5, 1926 in Newton, Massachusetts, USA. He was in Airplane. Does anyone know more about him?

Osgood Perkins

Mostly remembered today as the father of Anthony Perkins, Osgood Perkins enjoyed a successful career on Broadway, appearing in 22 major productions from 1924-36, often produced by Brock Pemberton. The highlight of his stage career was starring in the hit “The Front Page” as Walter Burns at the Times Square Theatre in 1928. Despite his status on Broadway, he was considered merely a character actor in Hollywood and died far too young of a heart attack at age 45. BornJames Ripley Osgood Perkins on May 16, 1892 in West Newton, Massachusetts, USA.

Amy Poehler

Poehler was born in Newton, Massachusetts, and grew up in Burlington, Massachusetts. She is the daughter of Eileen Frances (née Milmore) and William Grinstead Poehler, both teachers. She is a distant cousin of author Stephen King and U.S. senator Scott Brown, through shared New England ancestry.

Brian Prescott

Born March 14, 1972 in Newton, Massachusetts, USA. He guest-starred as the menacing Agent Howard in the NBC.com exclusive web series Heroes: Going Postal.

Robert Preston

Preston was born Robert Preston Meservey in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of Ruth L. (née Rea) and Frank Wesley Meservey, a garment worker and billing clerk for American Express. After attending Abraham Lincoln High School in Los Angeles, California, he studied acting at the Pasadena Community Playhouse. He would later serve in the United States Army Air Forces as an intelligence officer with the U.S. 9th Air Force during World War II.

James Remar

From reader Bo: James Remar (Google him) grew up in Newton Ctr (on the corner of Comm & Beacon) and would have graduated in ’71 from NHS (before it was NNHS) had he not left Newton (& school) to pursue an acting career in NYC before graduating. Ah, the folly of youth.

Eli Roth

Roth was born in Newton, Massachusetts, to Dr. Sheldon Roth, a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst and assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, and Cora Roth, a painter. Eli Raphael Roth (born April 18, 1972) is an American film director, producer, writer and actor. He is known for his role as Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds for which he won both a SAG Award (Best Ensemble) and a BFCA Critic’s Choice Award (Best Acting Ensemble), and for bringing back R rated horror at a time when studios were only making PG-13 films. He is part of a group of filmmakers dubbed the Splat Pack, because of their dedication to the genre and their relentless horror films which reinvented the genre for the modern age.

Barry Russo

Born May 3, 1925 in Newton, Massachusetts, USA. Barry Russo, also known as John Duke Russo, is an actor who appeared twice on Star Trek: The Original Series. He first played Lieutenant CommanderGiotto in the first season episode “The Devil in the Dark”. He then went on to play Commodore Robert Wesley in the second season episode “The Ultimate Computer”.

Linnea Sage

Born July 28, 1988 in Newton, Massachusetts, USA. Linnea Sage has been acting and training since she was 8 years old. She started acting on camera almost six years ago. After graduating last year from Brandeis University, with a Bachelor’s in Theatre and Business, she moved to New York to continue pursuing her career.

Julie Taymor

Julie Taymor is an Academy Award-nominated director, known for such films as Frida (2002) and Across the Universe (2007). She was born on December 15, 1952, in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. Her father, Melvin Lester Taymor, was a gynecologist. Her mother, Elizabeth Bernstein, was a teacher of political science. Young Taymor was fond of international folklore and mythology, and also developed a passion for theatre. She spent her formative years living in several countries. As a teenager, during the 1960s, she lived in Sri Lanka and India with the Experiment in International Living program, then studied acting in Paris, at the mime school of Jacques Lecoq. From 1969 to 1974 she studied theatre and mythology at Oberlin College, graduating in 1974 with a degree in folklore and mythology.

Maria Tecce

Born January 11, 1968 in Newton, Massachusetts, USA. Maria began acting in 1998 and her first work professionally as an actor was with Shakespeare & Company, a Boston-based theatre company producing both Shakespeare and modern works and she then moved on to work with the Irish company The Sugan Theatre Company also in Boston. In the late 1990’s she moved to Ireland and her first acting role was with Roger Corman’s Irish-based company Concorde Anois/New Horizons. She acted in four of Roger’s films, as well as Irish short films, feature films, and television commercials. Her stage debut came in the play “Eclipsed” in 1999 and she continued to perform on stage to Irish audience as with her multi-media company “extempo”. Maria was director and co-producer of ‘extempo’ as well as composing, arranging, and performing in the productions. In 1999 Maria produced three shows in Galway under the ‘extempo’ umbrella at The Town Hall Theatre and site-specific venues. Maria also began collaborating with members of Poland’s Gardzienice Theatre Company in 1998 and continues to work with them both in Poland and London.