AKA Rainn Dietrich Wilson

Born: 20-Jan-1966
Birthplace: Seattle, WA [1]

Gender: Male
Religion: Bahai
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Dwight on The Office

On Six Feet Under, Rainn Wilson played the apprentice undertaker from Cypress Mortuary College. On The Office, he plays Dwight Schrute, the creepy but lovably maladjusted suck-up assistant to boss Steve Carell.

He was named (but misspelled) for the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and his family has long been active in the Bahai faith. His uncle owns Jim Dandy Sewer and Plumbing Services, a longtime Seattle business that laid much of the city's downtown sewer infrastructure. Wilson's father worked at Jim Dandy as a dispatcher, and his mother sold handmade jewelry at Seattle's famous Pike Place Market.

Wilson made his stage debut playing Schroeder in a grade school production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and describes his high school self as a nerd -- a member of the model United Nations, pottery club, computer club, debate club, and chess club, who hung out with the Dungeons and Dragons crowd. He studied drama in college, and made his New York stage debut in dead serious Shakespeare plays in the late 1980s. In 1989, he directed an off-Broadway collection of sketches and clown acts called The New Bozena; the production ran three months and Fox expressed some interest in the television rights, but talk was all they offered.

His big break came in 1997, with a recurring role on the daytime soap opera One Life to Live, where he played an aspiring comedian who had secret connections to organized crime. In movies, Wilson's memorable supporting roles include Melvin Van Peebles' perpetually-stoned hippie producer in Baadasssss, a half-human-half-fish in House of 1,000 Corpses, and Luke Wilson's best friend and source for bad advice in My Super Ex-Girlfriend .

His wife is author Holiday Reinhorn, who wrote Big Cat, a well-received collection of funny and intensely personal short stories, and adapted one of her stories into the bizarre low-budget mystery movie Last Seen. Wilson and Reinhorn own a pit bull named Harper Lee, and Wilson himself writes his character Dwight's blog at NBC's fictional Dunder-Mifflin website.

    High School: Shorecrest High School, Shoreline, WA
    High School: New Trier High School, Winnetka, IL (1984)
    University: Tufts University
    University: MA Drama, University of Washington (1986)
    University: MFA Drama, New York University

    TELEVISION
    The Office (U.S.) Dwight Schrute (2005-)
    Six Feet Under Arthur Martin (2003-05)

    FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
    Juno (1-Sep-2007)
    The Last Mimzy (2007)
    My Super Ex-Girlfriend (20-Jul-2006)
    Sahara (24-Mar-2005)
    Baadasssss! (7-Sep-2003)
    House of 1000 Corpses (13-Mar-2003)
    Full Frontal (2-Aug-2002)
    America's Sweethearts (17-Jul-2001)
    When Billie Beat Bobby (16-Apr-2001)
    Almost Famous (15-Sep-2000)
    Galaxy Quest (23-Dec-1999)

Official Website:
http://blogs.nbc.com/office/

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