Tim Robbins

Robbins was born in West Covina, California, but moved to Greenwich Village with his family at a young age while his father, Gil Robbins, pursued a career as a member of the folk music group The Highwaymen. Robbins joined Theater for a New City at age twelve, and participated in his high school drama club, but returned to California to attend drama school at UCLA.

On graduation in 1981, Robbins founded the Actors' Gang in Los Angeles, an experimental theater group, with actor friends from his college softball team. He also took small parts in films, with a breakthrough part as pitcher "Nuke" LaLoosh in the 1988 baseball movie Bull Durham. On the set of that movie he began a relationship with fellow actor Sarandon that continues to the present day.

He received critical acclaim for his starring role as an amoral movie executive in the 1992 film The Player. His directorial and screenwriting debut was 1992's Bob Roberts, a mockumentary about a populist right-wing presidential candidate. Since that time he has written, produced, and directed several films with strong but subtle political content, such as the critically-acclaimed capital punishment saga Dead Man Walking in 1995, which earned him a directorial Oscar nomination, and 1999's Depression-era musical Cradle Will Rock. Robbins also continues to act in mainstream Hollywood thrillers like Arlington Road (1999) and Antitrust (2001), and to act in and direct Actors' Gang theater productions.

Robbins lives in New York City with Sarandon and their three children. He is a prominent spokesperson for anti-globalization, and vocally opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2003 a 15th-anniversary celebration of Bull Durham at the National Baseball Hall of Fame was cancelled due to controversy over his and Sarandon's public anti-war stance.

Selected filmography

• Bull Durham (1988)
• The Player (1992)
• Bob Roberts writer, director (1992)
• The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
• The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
• Dead Man Walking writer, director (1995)
• Cradle Will Rock writer, director (1999)
• Antitrust (2001)
• Human Nature (2001)

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