Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Terry Kinney
Terry Kinney (born January 29, 1954) is an American actor and theater director, and a founding member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, with Gary Sinise and Jeff Perry. Kinney is best known for his role as Tim McManus on HBO's prison drama Oz.
Kinney was born in Lincoln, Illinois, the son of Elizabeth L. (née Eimer), a telephone operator, and Kenneth C. Kinney, a tractor company supervisor.
Kinney has been involved in theatre since 1974, when he, Gary Sinise and Jeff Perry founded the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. In describing the company's radical usage of cinematic techniques such as accelerated time, substantial soundtracks and the rough equivalent of dissolves and bleeds, Kinney had said:
We’ve always been more influenced by cinematic techniques than stage techniques because stage techniques have been around long enough to become really boring and cliché. Our earliest influences were the films of Cassavetes, not any plays we’d seen. We always tend to score our pieces and we always tend to manipulate the audience to look where we want them to look and the way to do that is to get very tight on certain situations.
He has directed several plays (see below) and performed in several. In 1985, he performed in the Drama Desk Award–winning play Balm in Gilead by Lanford Wilson. In 1996, Kinney played Tilden in the Sam Shepard play Buried Child directed by Gary Sinise in New York City. During a performance of Buried Child, Kinney had a "terrible, horrible, screaming panic attack" and stayed offstage for several years, only returning in 2002 in a performance with Kurt Elling called Petty Delusions and Grand Obsessions. He directed Richard Greenberg's play Well Appointed Room in 2006 and Neil LaBute's reasons to be pretty in 2009. In 2010, he directed another Lanford Wilson play, Fifth of July, for Bay Street Theatre (July) and for the Williamstown Theatre Festival (August).
In October–November 2012, Kinney directed Checkers, a new play by Douglas McGrath at the Vineyard Theatre, New York City. He directed Lyle Kessler's new play Collision in January 2013 at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater.
Besides his theatrical work, Kinney has done much acting, mainly for television, starting in 1986 with an appearance in Miami Vice. In 1987, he starred as Pastor Tom Bird in the CBS miniseries Murder Ordained opposite JoBeth Williams. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of the idealistic unit manager Tim McManus on HBO's prison drama Oz.
In 1995, Kinney co-starred with Tommy Lee Jones in an adaptation of an Elmer Kelton western novel titled The Good Old Boys. Tommy Lee Jones directed this made-for-TV movie which also co-starred Sissy Spacek, Matt Damon, Sam Shepard, Wilford Brimley and retired Texas Ranger H. Joaquin Jackson.
Hub AI
Terry Kinney AI simulator
(@Terry Kinney_simulator)
Terry Kinney
Terry Kinney (born January 29, 1954) is an American actor and theater director, and a founding member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, with Gary Sinise and Jeff Perry. Kinney is best known for his role as Tim McManus on HBO's prison drama Oz.
Kinney was born in Lincoln, Illinois, the son of Elizabeth L. (née Eimer), a telephone operator, and Kenneth C. Kinney, a tractor company supervisor.
Kinney has been involved in theatre since 1974, when he, Gary Sinise and Jeff Perry founded the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. In describing the company's radical usage of cinematic techniques such as accelerated time, substantial soundtracks and the rough equivalent of dissolves and bleeds, Kinney had said:
We’ve always been more influenced by cinematic techniques than stage techniques because stage techniques have been around long enough to become really boring and cliché. Our earliest influences were the films of Cassavetes, not any plays we’d seen. We always tend to score our pieces and we always tend to manipulate the audience to look where we want them to look and the way to do that is to get very tight on certain situations.
He has directed several plays (see below) and performed in several. In 1985, he performed in the Drama Desk Award–winning play Balm in Gilead by Lanford Wilson. In 1996, Kinney played Tilden in the Sam Shepard play Buried Child directed by Gary Sinise in New York City. During a performance of Buried Child, Kinney had a "terrible, horrible, screaming panic attack" and stayed offstage for several years, only returning in 2002 in a performance with Kurt Elling called Petty Delusions and Grand Obsessions. He directed Richard Greenberg's play Well Appointed Room in 2006 and Neil LaBute's reasons to be pretty in 2009. In 2010, he directed another Lanford Wilson play, Fifth of July, for Bay Street Theatre (July) and for the Williamstown Theatre Festival (August).
In October–November 2012, Kinney directed Checkers, a new play by Douglas McGrath at the Vineyard Theatre, New York City. He directed Lyle Kessler's new play Collision in January 2013 at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater.
Besides his theatrical work, Kinney has done much acting, mainly for television, starting in 1986 with an appearance in Miami Vice. In 1987, he starred as Pastor Tom Bird in the CBS miniseries Murder Ordained opposite JoBeth Williams. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of the idealistic unit manager Tim McManus on HBO's prison drama Oz.
In 1995, Kinney co-starred with Tommy Lee Jones in an adaptation of an Elmer Kelton western novel titled The Good Old Boys. Tommy Lee Jones directed this made-for-TV movie which also co-starred Sissy Spacek, Matt Damon, Sam Shepard, Wilford Brimley and retired Texas Ranger H. Joaquin Jackson.