Biography



(official biography, Nov.2010)

LENNY VON DOHLEN made his film debut in the Academy Award-winning Tender Mercies (1983), starring Robert Duvall, written by Horton Foote and directed by Bruce Beresford. From that performance, he was given the leading role in MGM/UA's Electric Dreams (1984). Other starring roles quickly followed: Under the Biltmore Clock (1986) (TV), Blind Vision (1992), Jennifer Eight (1992), Edward Zwick's Leaving Normal (1992), David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), and the title role in Billy Galvin (1986), opposite Karl Malden.

In a career known for depth, diversity and mostly dramatic roles, Lenny Von Dohlen shook things up hilariously when he played one of the bumbling bad guys in Twentieth Century Fox's Home Alone III. This amidst a string of amazingly complex roles in highly regarded independent films such as: Bird of Prey (1995), One Good Turn (1996), Entertaining Angels (1998), Cadillac (1997), Frontline (1994), Tollbooth (2004), Beautiful Loser (2007), Night Blind (2009) and Regrets of White Camellias (2010).

Von Dohlen made an auspicious television debut in the Emmy Award-winning Kent State: The Day the War Came Home on NBC, and has appeared in some of television's most highly regarded shows, such as Thirtysomething, Grand, Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, The Lazarus Man, The Pretender, Miami CSI and Don't Touch, directed by Beau Bridges. However, he is probably best known for having created the agoraphobic orchid-growing Harold Smith in David Lynch's cutting-edge series Twin Peaks. He appeared in Masterpiece Theatre's presentation of Eudora Welty's The Ponder Heart on PBS, directed by Martha Coolidge. And he will be soon seen guest starring as Sheriff Andrew Jackson on "Psyche" in a sly tribute to the revolutionary series Twin Peaks.

Above all, the theater is his first love. In New York he created roles in Asian Shade, The Team, Twister and Vanishing Act and The Maderati, both by Richard Greenberg. For nine months he starred in Carol Churchill's hit play Cloud 9, directed by Tommy Tune, followed by The Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of Desire Under The Elms, opposite Kathy Baker. He has starred in Hamlet, Romeo And Juliet, Joe Orton's Loot, Wedekind's and Lanford Wilson's one-man play A Poster Of The Cosmos. On the West Coast, Mr. Von Dohlen has been see in Wedekind's Lulu at the La Jolla Playhouse, The Blue Room at the Pasadena Playhouse, in Theater Distric at the Black Dahlia Theater, and at the Theater at Boston Court he played Voltaire in the much acclaimed World Premier of Jean Claude van Italie's Light garnering the Los Angeles Critics Circle and Ovation Best Actor Award nominations.

In 2011 he will appear again at Theater @ Boston Court in Jessica Kubzansky's production of Tennessee Willams' Camino Real playing Don Quixote.

Born in Georgia, raised in Texas, Mr. Von Dohlen currently resides in Los Angeles and New York City.