Peter Weller

Peter Frederick Weller (born June 24, 1947) is an American film and stage actor, television director, and art historian. He made his film debut in Richard Lester’s Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979), with Tom Berenger, William Katt, Jeff Corey, Brian Dennehy, and Christopher Lloyd. Other early films include Sidney Lumet’s Just Tell Me What You Want (1980), with Ali MacGraw, Alan King, Myrna Loy, Dina Merrill, Keenan Wynn, and Tony Roberts; Alan Parker’s Shoot the Moon (1982), with Albert Finney, Diane Keaton, Karen Allen, and Dana Hill; and George P. Cosmatos’s Of Unknown Origin (1983), with Jennifer Dale, Lawrence Dane, Kenneth Welsh, and Louis Del Grande.

Weller is best known for his starring roles in W.D. Richter’s The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984), with Ellen Barkin, John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, Lloyd, Lewis Smith, Rosalind Cash, Clancy Brown, Pepe Serna, Robert Ito, Vincent Schiavelli, Dan Hedaya, Jonathan Banks, John Ashton, and Ronald Lacey; Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987), with Nancy Allen, Daniel O’Herlihy, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, and Miguel Ferrer; and Irvin Kershner’s RoboCop 2 (1990), with Allen, O’Herlihy, Belinda Bauer, Tom Noonan, and Gabriel Damo; and David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch (1991), with Judy Davis, Ian Holm, and Roy Scheider.

Other films in the 1980s include Michael Apted’s Firstborn (1984), with Teri Garr, Corey Haim, Sarah Jessica Parker, Robert Downey Jr., and Christopher Collet; A Killing Affair (1986), with Kathy Baker, John Glover, and Bill Smitrovich; The Tunnel (1988), with Jane Seymour, Fernando Rey, and Manuel de Blas; Shakedown (1988), with Sam Elliott, Patricia Charbonneau, Antonio Fargas, and Blanche Baker; Leviathan (1989), with Richard Crenna, Amanda Pays, Daniel Stern, Ernie Hudson, Michael Carmine, Lisa Eilbacher, and Hector Elizondo; and Abel Ferrara’s Cat Chaser (1989), with Kelly McGillis, Charles Durning, Frederic Forrest, and Tomás Milián.

Other films in the 1990s include Road to Ruin (1991), with Carey Lowell; Fifty/Fifty (1992), with Robert Hays and Charles Martin Smith (who also directed), Kevin Connor’s Sunset Grill (1993), with Lori Singer, Stacy Keach, Alexandra Paul, and John Rhys-Davies; The New Age (1994), with Davis, Patrick Bauchau, Rachel Rosenthal, Adam West, Corbin Bernsen, Patricia Heaton, and Samuel L. Jackson; Mighty Aphrodite (1995), with F. Murray Abraham, Woody Allen (who also directed), Claire Bloom, Helena Bonham Carter, Olympia Dukakis, Michael Rapaport, Mira Sorvino, David Ogden Stiers, and Jack Warden; Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders’s Beyond the Clouds (1995), with John Malkovich, Sophie Marceau, Vincent Perez, Irène Jacob, Jean Reno, Marcello Mastroianni, and Jeanne Moreau; Decoy (1995), with Robert Patrick; Sidney J. Furie’s Top of the World (1997), with Dennis Hopper, Tia Carrere, David Alan Grier, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Peter Coyote, and Joe Pantoliano; and Diplomatic Siege (1999), with Daryl Hannah.

Films in the 2000s include Shadow Hours (2000), with Balthazar Getty, Rebecca Gayheart, Peter Greene, Forrest, Brad Dourif, and Michael Dorn; Contaminated Man (2000), with William Hurt, Natascha McElhone, Katja Woywood, and Michael Brandon; Styx (2001), with Bryan Brown and Angus Macfadyen; Bernard Rose’s Ivans xtc. (2002), with Danny Huston; Brian Helgeland’s The Order (2003), with Heath Ledger, Benno Fürmann, Mark Addy, and Shannyn Sossamon; and Undiscovered (2005), with Pell James, Steven Strait, Kip Pardue, Sossamon, Carrie Fisher, Fisher Stevens, and Ashlee Simpson.

Films in late 2000s to 2010s include The Hard Easy (2006), with Henry Thomas, David Boreanaz, Vera Farmiga, Bruce Dern, and Gary Busey; Prey (2007), with Bridget Moynahan and Carly Schroeder; Once Fallen (2010), with Brian Presley, Taraji P. Henson, Ed Harris, and Amy Madigan; Dragon Eyes (2012), with Cung Le and Jean-Claude Van Damme; J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), with Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Bruce Greenwood, Leonard Nimoy, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Alice Eve; Repentance (2014), with Anthony Mackie, Forest Whitaker, Mike Epps, and Sanaa Lathan; and Skin Trade (2015), with Dolph Lundgren, Tony Jaa, Michael Jai White, and Ron Perlman.

Weller was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short for Partners (1993), with Graham Beckel, Ed Begley Jr., Seymour Cassel, Griffin Dunne, Charles Fleischer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Hays, Marg Helgenberger, Joseph Maher, Alan Rosenberg, and J.T. Walsh. He also did voice work in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (2013), with Ariel Winter, David Selby, Wade Williams, Michael Emerson, and Mark Valley; Yamasong: March of the Hollows (2017), with Nathan Fillion, Abigail Breslin, Whoopi Goldberg, Freda Pinto, Malcolm McDowell, George Takei, Ed Asner, and Bruce Davison.

TV movies and miniseries include Delbert Mann’s The Man Without a Country (1973), with Cliff Robertson, Beau Bridges, Peter Strauss, and Robert Ryan; Kentucky Woman (1983), with Cheryl Ladd and Ned Beatty; Apology (1986), with Lesley Ann Warren, Chris Noth, Glover, Charles S. Dutton, and Harvey Fierstein; Women & Men: Stories of Seduction (1990), with James Woods, Melanie Griffith, Bridges, Elizabeth McGovern, Molly Ringwald, and Kyra Sedgwick; Rainbow Drive (1990), with Sela Ward, David Caruso, and Tony Jay; The Substitute Wife (1994), with Farrah Fawcett and Lea Thompson; Richard Dreyfuss’s Present Tense, Past Perfect (1995), with Anne Archer and Martin Sheen; End of Summer (1995), with Jacqueline Bisset, Julian Sands, and Amy Locane; Tower of the First Born (1999), with Ben Cross, Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Marco Bonini, Ione Skye, and Heino Ferch; and The Poseidon Adventure (2005), with Adam Baldwin, Rutger Hauer, Steve Guttenberg, Bryan Brown, Alexa Hamilton, Tinarie Van Wyk, C. Thomas Howell, Amber Sainsbury, and Nathalie Boltt.

In television, Weller hosted the program Engineering an Empire on the History Channel from 2005 to 2007. He also played Christopher Henderson in the fifth season of 24, Stan Liddy in the fifth season of the Showtime original series Dexter, as well as Charles “Charlie” Barosky in 11 episodes in the sixth season of Kurt Sutter’s Sons of Anarchy. Since 2012, Weller has been involved in the A&E (now Netflix) series Longmire both as a director and an actor. In 2017, Weller appeared on The Last Ship as Dr. Paul Vellek.

Each review will be linked to the title below.

(*seen originally in theaters)

(**seen rereleased in theaters)

The Man Without a Country (1973) – directed by Delbert Mann – TV movie
The Silence (1975) – directed by Joseph Hardy – TV movie
Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979) – directed by Richard Lester
Just Tell Me What You Want (1980) – directed by Sidney Lumet
Mourning Becomes Electra (1981) – directed by Nick Havinga – miniseries
Shoot the Moon (1982) – directed by Alan Parker
Kentucky Woman (1983) – directed by Walter Doniger – TV movie
Two Kinds of Love (1983) – directed by Jack Bender – TV movie
Of Unknown Origin (1983) – directed by George P. Cosmatos
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) – directed by W.D. Richter
Firstborn (1984) – directed by Michael Apted
A Killing Affair (1986) – directed by David Saperstein
Apology (1986) – directed by Robert Bierman – TV movie
RoboCop (1987) – directed by Paul Verhoeven
The Tunnel (1988) – directed by Antonio Drove
Shakedown (1988) – directed by James Glickenhaus
Leviathan (1989) – directed by George P. Cosmatos
Cat Chaser (1989) – directed by Abel Ferrara
RoboCop 2 (1990) – directed by Irvin Kershner
Rainbow Drive (1990) – directed by Bobby Roth – TV movie
Women and Men: Stories of Seduction (1990) – directed by Frederic Raphael, Tony Richardson, & Ken Russell – TV anthology movie
Road to Ruin (1991) – directed by Charlotte Brandström
Naked Lunch (1991) – directed by David Cronenberg
Fifty/Fifty (1992) – directed by Charles Martin Smith
Sunset Grill (1993) – directed by Kevin Connor
Partners (1993) – also director, co-writer – TV short
The Substitute Wife (1994) – directed by Peter Werner – TV movie
The New Age (1994) – directed by Michael Tolkin
Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee (1994) – directed by Frank Pierson – uncredited – TV movie
Mighty Aphrodite (1995) – directed by Woody Allen
Beyond the Clouds (1995) – directed by Michelangelo Antonioni & Wim Wenders
Decoy (1995) – directed by Vittorio Rambaldi
Present Tense, Past Perfect (1995) – directed by Richard Dreyfuss – TV short
Screamers (1996) – directed by Christian Duguay
Top of the World (1997) – directed by Sidney J. Furie
End of Summer (1997) – directed by Linda Yellen – TV movie
The Sands of Time (1998) – directed by Alberto Negrin – TV movie
Diplomatic Siege (1999) – directed by Gustavo Graef Marino
Shadow Hours (2000) – directed by Isaac H. Eaton
Falling Through (2000) – directed by Colin Bucksey
Contaminated Man (2000) – directed by Anthony Hickox
Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula (2000) – directed by Joe Chappelle – TV movie
Styx (2001) – directed by Alex Wright
Ivans xtc. (2002) – directed by Bernard Rose
The Order (2003) – directed by Brian Helgeland
Man of God (2005) – directed by Jefery Levy
Undiscovered (2005) – directed by Meiert Avis
The Poseidon Adventure (2005) – directed by John Putch – TV movie
Sold! (2005) – directed by Bryan Gordon – TV movie
The Hard Easy (2006) – directed by Ari Ryan
Prey (2007) – directed by Darrell Roodt
Once Fallen (2010) – directed by Ash Adams
Forced to Fight (2011) – directed by Jonas Quastel
Dragon Eyes (2012) – directed by John Hyams
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (2013) – directed by Jay Oliva
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) – directed by J. J. Abrams
Repentance (2014) – directed by Philippe Caland
Skin Trade (2015) – directed by Ekachai Uekrongtham
Yamasong: March of the Hollows (2017) – directed by Sam Koji Hale

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