Charming, compactly built, extremely affable American actor Brian
Edward Benben was born on June 18, 1956, in Winchester, Virginia, to Gloria Patricia (Coffman) and Peter Michael Benben Sr., a produce buyer. His paternal grandparents were Polish.
Deciding on an acting career while quite young, he started things out
at age 17 performing in off-off-Broadway shows in New York. Such late
1970s theater works included "Wild Oats," "The Tooth of Crime," "The
Overcoat," "Gossip," "A Moon for the Misbegotten," and the role of Bottom
in "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
During his early twenties he began to pursue TV work and made an auspicious
debut on the very serious side with the infamous
The Gangster Chronicles (1981),
in which his Michael Lasker character was a barely disguised version of
real-life mobster Meyer Lansky. He also played a gay lover in the
TV movie drama
Family Business (1983),
starring a straight-acting Milton Berle,
and then portrayed Tom Hayden, the
California senator who was once convicted, along with others, of
inciting riots that disrupted the 1968 Democratic National Convention,
in the redramatization of
Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8 (1987).
Brian also had supporting roles that also accentuated his serious side,
in the feature films
Süchtig (1988),
Dark Angel (1990) and
Dämon in Seide (1989).
He got regular series work in the late 1980s playing a chauvinistic
hospital resident who felt women had no place being surgeons on the
short-lived medical drama
Kay O'Brien (1986). But it was
the sexually frank sitcom
Dream On (1990) that catapulted
Brian to stardom as the self-effacing, newly divorced book editor
Martin Tupper. The cable show, which took on a whimsical, if much more
hormonal, Thurber-like feel, lasted six seasons. During that run he was
given a choice starring part in the film
Radioland Murders - Wahnsinn auf Sendung (1994). Had
the series been on a first-rank network (it was on Fox briefly in 1995),
his star power might have luminesced even more brightly. Nevertheless, this
led to his second starring sitcom role, in which he used his real name
to play a news co-anchor, on the very aptly titled
The Brian Benben Show (1998)
for CBS. The show, for which he was co-executive producer, had a much
shorter life than "Dream On."
Since then, Brian has maintained amenably on TV, particularly in
mini-movies. He was found mixing it up with
Diane Keaton in the irreverent
Sister Mary Explains It All (2001),
playing at odds with William Hurt in the
drama
The Flamingo Rising (2001)
and returning to his mob roots in the mini-series
Kingpin (2003), this time as a
morally tormented surgeon. Other series work included a doctor in the "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff Private Practice (2007) and a clever grifter in Imposters (2017) On stage, Brian took his initial Broadway bow
in "Slab Boys" alongside Sean Penn,
Kevin Bacon and
Val Kilmer.
Brian has been married since 1982 to actress
Madeleine Stowe, who played his wife
Ruth Lasker in the "Gangster" series. The couple has a daughter (May
Theodora, born 1996) and own a working cattle ranch in Texas.
