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Dermot Mulroney
After [my father had] seen me in five or six things, he said, “Son, your mother and I really enjoyed your recent film, and I must say that you’re a lot like John Wayne.” And I said, “How so?” And he said, “Well, you’re exactly the same in all your roles.” Now, as a modern American actor, that’s not what you want to hear. But for a guy who watched John Wayne movies and grew up in Iowa, it’s a sterling compliment.
— Dermot Mulroney
UP until his star turn in the hit summer romantic comedy My Best Friend’s Wedding, Dermot Mulroney was always a groomsman, never the groom, so to speak. Completing a romantic triangle that included the lovely Julia Roberts as his sabotage-minded, pratfall-prone best friend and the equally fetching Cameron Diaz as his Polly Purebread intended, Mulroney finally landed in the enviable position of starring in the kind of major-studio effort that can catapult a guy straight to the top of the hot young actors list.
Though he has been hailed over the past eight years for his respectable performances in both independent and commercial films, Mulroney has nonetheless remained a relatively anonymous quantity to the average moviegoer — quite a feat considering his undeniable charisma and striking good looks. But perhaps some of his namelessness has to do with the fact that his fate has been hopelessly intertwined with that of the similarly monikered Dylan McDermott, with whom he is frequently confused. Or perhaps it is because he has heretofore blended seamlessly into ensemble casts, or played secondary parts as the sympathetic love interest in a veritable parade of “strong women” films like the distaff Western Bad Girls, Bridget Fonda’s “I am an international spy” vehicle, Point of No Return, and the multi-generational female bonding bee How To Make an American Quilt. Then again, some of Mulroney’s more adventurous outings have been in decidedly non-mainstream films like 1989’s Longtime Companion, a deeply affecting drama in which he played a gay man who dies of an AIDS-related disease, and Living in Oblivion, an oddball movie-within-a-movie in which he co-starred with that squirrelly poster boy for the independent cinema, Steve Buscemi. Without really setting out to do so, Mulroney has fashioned his own brand of low-profile success by counterbalancing each small-scale indie project on his résumé with parts in cineplex-bound offerings. Always on the verge of blipping on Hollywood’s radar, the art-house favorite has proven with his charming performance in My Best Friend’s Wedding that he can command the commercial battlefield with the best of them.
Raised in Alexandria, Virginia, the youngest son in a brood of four boys and one girl, Dermot learned to play classical cello and appeared in local children’s-theater productions from an early age. He went on to attend Northwestern University in Chicago, graduating in 1985 with a degree in film, theater, and music. His squeaky-clean Irish good looks — a scar bisecting his upper lip adds a hint of roguish charm — brought him a steady diet of roles in made-for-TV movies like the incest-themed Sin of Innocence (1986), the teen pregnancy-themed Daddy (1987), and the anti-drug diatribe The Drug Knot (1986), a cliché-ridden drama that one plain-speaking reviewer called “as subtle as a punt to the groin.” Mulroney was rescued from After-School Special hell with a feature-film assignment playing Roddy McDowell’s son in Blake Edwards’s little-heeded 1988 Western, Sunset. That same year brought a promising assignment in the Brat Pack-ish ensemble cast of the abominable Western Young Guns, a film that gave him the opportunity to eschew personal cleanliness to portray a coarse character named “Dirty Steve.” Mulroney has revisited the genre frequently — with mixed results — over the course of his career.
Following his appearance in Young Guns, Mulroney ducked into the indie scene, surfacing in a string of little-seen, if critically respected films like the aforementioned Longtime Companion (1989); Bright Angel (1990), in which he played Sam Shepard’s dead ringer of a son; and Where the Day Takes You (1992). His gritty portrayal of a teen hustler’s fringe existence on L.A.’s mean streets in the latter film garnered him the Seattle Film Festival’s Best Actor Award. The year 1993 proved to be a breakthrough one for the young actor: Point of No Return, the American remake of La Femme Nikita, afforded him a high-profile opportunity to hone his skills as a puppy-dog boyfriend; and the little-seen River Phoenix starrer The Thing Called Love gave him his first chance to sing on-screen (he has since contributed his pipes to Kansas City and My Best Friend’s Wedding). Also that year, Mulroney and Phoenix collaborated with Sam Shepard on his Western ghost story Silent Tongue.
The following year offered little in the way of standout opportunities — suffice it to say that the very bad Bad Girls was a relative high point in a generally underwhelming year. But, out of the gate in 1995, he was trusty as Holly Hunter’s doomed partner in the femme policier Copycat; nifty as cold-feeted Winona Ryder’s adoring carpenter fiancé in How To Make an American Quilt (their on-screen chemistry resulted in a Best Kiss nomination from MTV); and appropriately acerbic as the eye patch-wearing cinematographer in Living in Oblivion. In 1996, Mulroney played a sizeable role as Jennifer Jason Leigh’s thuggish husband in Robert Altman’s Kansas City, and joined Kyle MacLachlan and Elisabeth Shue in the paranoiac power-outage flick The Trigger Effect.
Mulroney, who has commented that he “decided a long time ago not to let the movie business be how [he] gets his kicks,” otherwise occupies himself by playing the cello, the mandolin, and the dobro in an eclectic septet called the Low and Sweet Orchestra — his actor brother Kieran, with whom he co-starred in 1991’s Career Opportunities, plays violin. The punk-folk collective released its debut album, Goodbye to All That, in 1996. In keeping with this tradition of creative collaboration among family members, Mulroney has appeared opposite his wife, actress Catherine Keener, in Living in Oblivion and Box of Moonlight (1997). He next appeared in Roland Joffe’s “sarcastic thriller” Goodbye, Lover (1999), with Ellen DeGeneres, Patricia Arquette, Mary-Louise Parker, and Don Johnson, who — get this — was cast as Mulroney’s brother. Speaking of brothers, Mulroney believes he’s an embryonic twin, which occurs when one twin fails to fully develop and is absorbed by the other surviving twin while in the womb.
Occupation: Actor, Musician, Producer
Date of Birth: October 31, 1963
Place of Birth: Alexandria, Va., USA
Sign: Sun in Scorpio, Moon in Aries
Relations: Wife: Catherine Keener (actress); son: Clyde; siblings: Sean, Conor, Kieran (actor, musician), and Maura
Education: Northwestern University; graduated with a degree in film, theater, and music in 1985
Fan Mail: C/O United Talent Agency
9560 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 500
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
USA
Dermot Mulroney: Credits
MOVIES
Actor
Trixie — 2000
Where the Money Is — 2000
Goodbye Lover — 1999
Box of Moonlight — 1997
My Best Friend’s Wedding — 1997
Kansas City — 1996
The Trigger Effect — 1996
Copycat — 1995
Living in Oblivion — 1995
How To Make an American Quilt — 1995
There Goes My Baby — 1994
Angels in the Outfield — 1994
Bad Girls — 1994
Point of No Return — 1993
The Thing Called Love — 1993
Samantha — 1992
Where the Day Takes You — 1992
Bright Angel — 1991
Career Opportunities — 1991
Longtime Companion — 1990
Staying Together — 1989
Unconquered — 1989
Young Guns — 1988
Sunset — 1988
Daddy — 1987
Long Gone — 1987
Survival Quest — 1986
Associate Producer
Living in Oblivion — 1995
MUSIC
Goodbye to All That — 1996
TV
Bastard out of Carolina — 1996 (Movie)
The Last Outlaw — 1993 (Movie)
The Heart of Justice — 1993 (Movie)
Family Pictures — 1993 (Miniseries)
Unconquered — 1989 (Movie)
Long Gone — 1987 (Movie)
Daddy — 1987 (Movie)
The Drug Knot — 1986 (Movie)
Sin of Innocence — 1986 (Movie)
Photo Gallery-
Topics: Actor, Celebrities, Musician, Producer
Tags: Bad Girls, Copycat, Daddy, Kansas City, Long Gone, Musician, Producer, Sunset, Trixie
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