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| Feb 2 2010, 8:35 PM EST (current) | ILoveJorja | 6 words added |
| Jan 23 2010, 3:17 PM EST | ILoveJorja |
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William L. Petersen
Petersen, the youngest of six children, was born in Illinois to parents who worked in the furniture business. He graduated from Bishop Kelly High School in Boise, Idaho, in 1972. He was accepted to Idaho State University on a football scholarship. While at Idaho State, Petersen took an acting course which changed the direction of his life. He left school along with his then wife, Joanne, in 1974 and followed a drama professor to Basque country where he studied as a Shakespearian actor. Petersen was interested in Basque culture and he studied the Basque language, Euskera, and gave his daughter the Basque name Maite, meaning love. Petersen returned to Idaho intent on being an actor. Not wanting to work a non-acting job in Idaho, he returned to the Chicago area, living with relatives. He performed with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company and was a co-founder of the Remains Theater Ensemble.
He is usually credited without his middle initial (i.e. credited as "William Petersen" and not "William L. Petersen"). Because his role in Manhunter was so emotionally exhausting, he did everything he could to rid himself of Will Graham after finishing principal photography. He shaved off his beard, cut his hair and dyed it blonde. He also claims to have done this because, while rehearsing for a play in Chicago, his dialogue was always coming out Will Graham; he dyed his hair so he could look in the mirror and see a different person. In a move perhaps indicative of his career choices, Petersen declined a part in Oliver Stone's Platoon, as it would have kept him in the Philippines, away from his family. Instead, he worked on the 1987 made-for-TV movie Long Gone. To Live and Die in L.A., Petersen appears, briefly, frontally nude. Petersen was offered the role of Henry Hill in the movie Goodfellas, but turned it down. In 1993, Petersen appeared in the miniseries "Return to Lonesome Dove," and in 1996, appeared in Fear. Both projects featured him as a character with the surname "Walker."
In the 2000 release, The Contender, Petersen played the role of Governor Jack Hathaway, an unscrupulous candidate for vice president following the death of the incumbent. He also appeared uncredited in the noir thriller Mulholland Falls as a character who finds himself on the violent receiving end of Los Angeles police.
William Petersen, the star of the TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, had
a near death experience which he described in an interview for Playboy magazine
(March 2004, page 139).
"Years ago, doing a play in Chicago, I cut my finger in half onstage. We
obviously had to stop because, well, I didn't have a finger. By the time they
got me to the ER I had lost a lot of blood and passed out. I could hear the
doctors working on me, saying that they had lost my vital signs. I was on the
"All That Jazz" escalator with a long tunnel and a lot of white light. Then I
specifically remember a dominant male voice saying, "It's not your time. Get
off the escalator. You've got ** to do." I came to, and got sewed up.
Something in me changed, a sort of knowledge that somewhere on the other side,
it's good. For weeks, the more I talked about it, the more freaked out people
got. Some of them were like, "Okay, whatever: You took too many drugs."
