ACTOR / WRITER / PRODUCER
ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
1992 University of Arkansas, Lifetime Achievement Award
1980 University of Arkansas, Arkansas Traveler Award
1978 Catholic University of America, Distinguished Alumni Award
1956 U.S. Army, Meritorious Service Award
Olympic Trials, Coach/Competitor (3rd Army Swimming Team)
Laurence Luckinbill has achieved extraordinary success as a stage, film and television actor, as a writer, a teacher, and as the founder & producer of a non-profit NY theatre company. He served as a cultural affairs director for the U.S. Department of State during the Kennedy Administration, as a producer for network television, and for his own multi-media production company which produced two CD-ROM products: Lucy & Desi: The Scrapbooks, Volume I; and How to Save Your Family History: A 10-Step Guide by Lucie Arnaz. Luckinbill has written a series of interactive multimedia stories for digital CD-ROM entitled Adventures in Hyperhistory, with the aim of engaging audiences in history’s human stories through the use of original dramatic video scenarios with continuing characters, combined with a unique hypertext research engine.
As an actor, among many starring roles, he includes:
FEATURE FILMS:
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier; Cocktail; The Boys in the Band; Such Good Friends; Messenger of Death; Not for Publication; The Promise.
TELEVISION FILMS:
Dash & Lilly, The 5:48; The Mating Season; Death Sentence; Winner Take All; One Terrific Guy; The Delphi Bureau (also a series); The Kent State Tragedy; The Boston Massacre; A Time to Heal: The Making of the Vietnam Memorial; The Lindberg Kidnapping; City of Angels; Lyndon; One More Try (a half-hour comedy pilot he created for CBS TV); and The Exonerated (Court TV’s premiere feature film).
BROADWAY:
Cabaret; A Fair Country; Chapter Two; Poor Murderer; (also co-translator); Past Tense; Beekman Place; Tartuffe; Dancing in the End Zone; A Man For All Seasons.
OFF BROADWAY:
The Boys in the Band; The Memory Bank; The Fantastiks; Alpha Beta; Horseman Pass By; What the Butler Saw; Galileo; Oedipus Rex; The Cleopatra Club; A Cheever Evening; The Firebugs; Clarence Darrow Tonight!; Lyndon; Teddy Tonight! and Hemingway.
NATIONAL TOURS:
They’re Playing Our Song; I Do, I Do!; Whose Life is it Anyway?; Social Security; A Man For All Seasons.
Luckinbill is the founder of The New York Actors Theatre (1978-80) and a charter member of The Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival (1959-61), The Lincoln Center Repertory Company (1964), and The American Conservatory Theatre (1965-66).
During the Kennedy administration, Luckinbill served in the U.S. Foreign Service for two years, in Africa and Italy, as director, producer, actor and lecturer on American Theatre and Culture. In 1965, he was invited to become an officer of the United States Information Agency.
He earned a B.A. in science and humanities from the University of Arkansas and an M.F.A. in playwriting from The Catholic University of America. As a journalist, he has contributed articles to Esquire, Cosmopolitan, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Burlington Record, and American Theatre Magazine, among others.
Luckinbill wrote the Emmy-winning biographical story for the NBC TV special, Lucy & Desi: A Home Movie; a play with music, Mind on Trial, about the infamous Slansky trials in Czechoslovakia, which was produced at the Actor’s Studio Playwright’s Unit; and three of his four solo presentation plays, Clarence Darrow Tonight!, Teddy Tonight! about the life of President Theodore Roosevelt, and most recently, Hemingway, all of which he produced for the New York stage, for television and for DVD.
Currently, Luckinbill appears around the world in his one person portrayals of Lyndon Johnson, Clarence Darrow, Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway. He has had rave reviews nationwide for his powerful interpretations of these passionate Americans. He performed his plays at the 1997 inauguration Celebration in Washington, D.C., at the invitation of President Clinton.
Luckinbill, a native of Arkansas, resides in Weston, CT. He is married to actress/singer Lucie Arnaz and is the father of five - Nick, Ben, Simon, Joe and Kate.