Philip Baker Hall

Philip Baker Hall was born in Toledo, Ohio, served in the United States Army in Germany, and worked as a high school English teacher before committing to professional acting in his thirties in New York and Los Angeles theater. In 1984, he delivered a mesmerizing one-man stage and film performance as disgraced former President Richard Nixon in Robert Altman's Secret Honor, drinking and raging alone in his study.

Hall became a beloved muse to director Paul Thomas Anderson, who cast him as weathered veteran gambler Sydney in Hard Eight (1996), porn theatre owner Floyd Gondolli in Boogie Nights (1997), and cancer-stricken quiz show host Jimmy Gator in Magnolia (1999). Television audiences immortalized him as the hilariously stern library detective Lieutenant Bookman in Seinfeld, pursuing Jerry for an overdue copy of Tropic of Cancer from 1971.