Biography for
Dirk Benedict More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

1 March 1945, Helena, Montana, USA

Birth Name

Dirk Niewoehner

Height

5' 11" (1.80 m)

Mini Biography

Dirk Benedict was born in Montana on March 1st, 1945. He was raised in the country, far away from anything connected with movies or acting. He gathered his first experiences in acting (on a dare) in a college production of "Showboat" where he got the main part. His father, a lawyer, died when Dirk was 18, which was hard for him to take. While working on Georgia, Georgia (1972) in Sweden, he made the first contact with a macrobiotic diet and changed his eating habits drastically. He was 26 at that time. A few years later, doctors found that he had cancer of the prostate. He refused to accept the usual treatment and moved away to a secluded cottage. Dirk managed to cure himself from cancer by following the rules of his macrobiotic diet. When he got his part as "Starbuck" in "Battlestar Galactica" (1978), the doctors stated that he was in good health. Dirk's main successes were "Battlestar Galactica" and "The A-Team" (1983) in which he played "Templeton - The Face - Peck". He was formerly married to actress Toni Hudson and has two sons (George and Roland).

IMDb Mini Biography By: Sonja Horstmann

Mini Biography

It's a long way from the vastness of Montana's Big Sky country to the vastness of outer space, but Dirk Benedict is taking the transition in stride. The actor's hometown of White Sulphur Springs, Montana, was so small and remote that it lacked either a motion picture theatre or television station. Benedict became the co-star in MCA TV's "Battlestar Galactica" (1978) as a skirt-chasing, fun-loving combat pilot aboard an embattled spaceship in a far-off galaxy.

It was at Whitman College, in Walla Walla, Washington, that Dirk became interested in acting. During his freshman year, he accepted a dare to audition for the Spring musical and won the lead role of "Gaylord Ravenal" in "Showboat". The next three years were filled with many more musical productions. Upon graduation, Benedict began a two-year training program under John Fernald, who had headed London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London for fifteen years. He then played repertory theatre in Seattle and in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he played such roles as "Edmund" in "King Lear", "Tarleton" in "Misalliance", "Ensign Pulver" in "Mister Roberts" and the lead in Neil Simon's "Star-Spangled Girl".

Meanwhile, Benedict maintained an active interest in music and formed a Dixieland Jazz Band in Seattle. Prior to their debut, he visited New York to meet an agent recommended by his college professor. Benedict never made it back to Seattle. The agent sent him to an audition which resulted in a co-starring role with Diana Rigg and Keith Michell in "Abelard and Heloise", first on Broadway, then in Los Angeles. Two weeks after the show closed on Broadway, he was winging across the Atlantic to Sweden for his first movie, Georgia, Georgia (1972) in which he co-starred with the late Diana Sands. This film about draft resisters, shot entirely in Sweden, was written by the well known writer Maya Angelou. In Sweden, Benedict lost his heart to Miss Sweden, discovered Akvavit and began a new way of eating based on whole grains and vegetables. On his return to New York, he replaced Keir Dullea in "Butterflies Are Free" on Broadway where he worked with the ever-young Gloria Swanson, as his mother. When the New York run ended, he received an offer to repeat his performance in Hawaii, opposite Barbara Rush. While there, he appeared as a guest on "Hawaii Five-O" (1968). The producers of a psycho-thriller called Sssssss (1973) saw Benedict's performance in "Hawaii Five-O" (1968) and promptly cast him as the lead in that movie. He next played the psychotic wife-beating husband of Twiggy in her American film debut, W (1974). Benedict starred in the television series, "Chopper One" (1974) then retreated to his cabin in the mountains of Montana where he spent nearly a year writing. Two of the scripts he wrote during that "sabbatical" were optioned for motion picture production and he is at work on his first novel, which will be set in Montana.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous

Spouse

Toni Hudson

(31 May 1986 - 1995) (divorced) 2 children

Trivia

Helped write the 'love scene' between his and Patsy Kensit's character in Blue Tornado (1991).

Dirk is a member of Phi Delta Theta Fraternity

A prostate cancer survivor. In 1974, medical doctors recommended surgery, but he claimed to have cured his cancer through a macrobiotic diet recommended by Gloria Swanson, his co-star on Broadway in "Butterflies Are Free," and by exercise and fasting. Over a period of 3 years and under the guidance of Michio Kushi, according to his book Confessions Of A Kamikaze Cowboy, beat the cancer. He continues the diet to this day.

Has three sons: John born in 1968, and two younger sons, with Toni Hudson are George (born in 1988) and Roland (born in 1991).

Divorced from actress Toni Hudson in 1995, he received custody of his boys, George and Roland. He took them home to Montana where he raised them in a 900-square-foot log cabin on his macrobiotic diet.

After raising his two boys, his comeback actually began in Germany after he appeared at a sci-fi convention in Bonn. A writer-director there saw him and cast him in the German movie Goldene Zeiten (2006).

Earned a B.A. in theatre from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.

Personal Quotes

On the "The A-Team" (1983): "I enjoyed it immensely. By nature, I'm terribly serious, so as an actor I tend to want to be silly. It was a comedic show, almost like a cartoon. We just had to hang on to enough reality to make it possible for adults to watch it. The actors I worked with, especially Mr. T and Dwight Schultz were very funny people. It was pretty much four years of laughter".

On making "The A-Team" (1983): "The problem is that the people who created the show had no idea what it was. They didn't understand what the show was because it became something other than what they intended. The network hated us; the people in authority were like the military in the show, trying to control us. We took control of it. We made it much funnier than it was, and we made it much more politically incorrect than it was intended to be. All the liberals in Hollywood hated it; they hated the cigars, the guns, the bravado and the fact we always thought we were right".

"I'm only proud of two things in my life; one is my children, the second is my first book."

Women are from Venus. Men are from Mars. Hamlet does not scan as Hamletta. Nor does Han Solo as Han Sally. Faceman is not the same as Facewoman. Nor does a Stardoe a Starbuck make. Men hand out cigars. Women 'hand out' babies. And thus the world, for thousands of years, has gone round.

Where Are They Now

(2001) Directing Cahoots (2001) - a project he started working on 26 years ago. He also wrote the screenplay.

(February 2005) Will be appearing in Goldene Zeiten (2006), a Peter Thorwarth film due out in summer 2005.

(2006) Continues to write, contributing essays to the Blockbuster Video UK website and science fiction magazines.

(August 2006) Appeared at the Wizard World convention in Chicago, Illinois.

(January 2007) In UK. Entered the _"Celebrity Big Brother" (2007)_ house on January 3rd. Hopes to stay for up to 25 days in this Reality TV Show.

(January 2007) Finished third in the celebrity version of Big Brother

(May 2007) Appeared at the Dutch Star Con in The Netherlands, together with Dwight Schultz.

(1993) Release of his book, "And Then We Went Fishing: A Story of Fatherhood, Fate and Forgiveness".

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