Career Highlights: Who'll Stop the Rain?, Papillon, The Liberation of L.B. Jones
First Major Screen Credit: Mission: Impossible: The Amnesiac (1969)
Biography
Disdaining the "surfer" mentality of his California boyhood friends, Anthony Zerbe chose to head to New York to become an actor. He studied with Stella Adler and worked off-Broadway before achieving success in the mid-'60s. He made his film debut in 1967's Will Penny, after which he settled into a series of sharkish, saturnine villainous portrayals. An adherent of EST training, Zerbe preferred to work with people who allowed him "space" to develop a characterization; one such person was David Janssen, with whom Zerbe appeared on the mid-'70s TV series Harry O (in which he won an Emmy award for his portrayal of Lieutenant Trench). Active on-stage and in films and television into the 1990s, Anthony Zerbe has contributed some unforgettable acting moments to the big screen, notably as the shadow-enshrouded leper in 1971's Papillon and the "blowed up real good" secondary villain in the 1989 James Bond opus License to Kill. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Anthony Jared Zerbe (born May 20, 1936) is an American stage, film and television actor. He is perhaps best remembered for his role as the post-apocalyptic cult leader Matthias in The Omega Man, a 1971 film adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 novel, I Am Legend. He is also well-known for playing Milton Krest in the 1989 James Bond film Licence to Kill, and being featured in more than a dozen roles in which his character exploded.
He is the former artistic director of Reflections, A New Plays Festival at the Geva Theatre in Rochester, New York, which is currently touring the United States in Behind The Broken Words, a performance of contemporary poetry, comedy and dramatic works with fellow actor Roscoe Lee Browne. Zerbe also continues to perform in a project, Prelude to Lime Creek, with poet and lyricist Joe Henry.
In 1976, Zerbe won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Continuing Performance By a Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his role as Lieutenant KC Trench in the private detective series Harry O.
He married Arnette Jens on October 7, 1962.
He performed at Elon University on April 15, 2009.