A look at the career of the most successful and
prolific actor that Marshall has ever produced.
He has been nominated for an Academy Award and a Screen Actors Guild award. He has won a Golden Globe and numerous other show business accolades. He has appeared in almost 100 motion pictures, working alongside the likes of Jack Nicholson, James Earl Jones and Faye Dunaway, and world-renowned directors like John Huston, David Lynch and Peter Jackson. He has appeared in almost as many television shows, including The X-Files, Murder She Wrote and Miami Vice. He’s had a string of stage successes, including a very impressive stint with the highly respected Circle Repertory Company. And, he’s from Huntington and an alumnus of Marshall University.
Meet Brad Dourif, the most prolific and successful actor that the university has ever produced.
Ask 10 people if they know who Brad Dourif is and nine of them will tell you, “I have no idea.” But the tenth person will probably say, “Isn’t he the guy who was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Lord of the Rings and Deadwood?”
Now that he claims he’s retired, you may never see him on film or stage again. But, go online and visit the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), type in “Brad Dourif” and the screen will start scrolling past movie after movie, TV show after TV show. In anyone’s book, it is an impressive resume. You would think after a 30-year career in show business, with his many accomplishments, Dourif would have been the guest of honor at a parade through downtown Huntington, or would have had a street named after him, or at least a spot on the Huntington Wall of Fame. None of that has happened. Why not?
“I’m a hermit,” he said with a laugh in a 2003 interview. Now that he’s retired, he’s even more of one, doing a bit of carpentry work around his house and playing video games. “I feel like it’s time to just enjoy life a little bit and retire,” he says. But he hasn’t quit completely. Soon, he’s going to reprise the voice of Chucky, the evil doll from the 1988 movie, Child’s Play, in a ten-part television series.
How did this acting phenomenon get his start? Born in Huntington on March 18, 1950, the third child of six in the Dourif family, he grew up on Staunton Road. After his father’s death, when Dourif was only three, his mother, Joan, married the late Bill Campbell, one of the world’s leading amateur golfers and well-known Huntington businessman. As a stepdad, said Dourif, Campbell did a good job: “He was a little tough, but you know, I was a bit of a space cadet and this was alien territory to him.”
Dourif’s mother, however, had the bigger influence on her son. She was active in Community Players, the acting troupe that performed in Huntington from 1937 to 1967, mostly at the Abbott Theater on 14th Street West. When she was playing in Anastasia, Dourif went to see her rehearse.
“She did this one scene where she was talking about a butterfly and I saw a butterfly on the stage. I thought, ‘How did she do that?’ That’s why I became an actor.”
He describes the moment as magical and profoundly life-changing. But it wasn’t easy for the young man who had years earlier failed third grade at the Marshall Lab School because of his undiagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).
In high school he studied at Aiken Preparatory School in Aiken, South Carolina, but struggled there as well.
“I was a really horrible student. I just couldn’t pay attention. I couldn’t spell. I had a bad short-term memory. They hadn’t ‘invented’ ADD back then and they just thought I was lazy and forgetful and stupid.”
He also says his ADD kept him from being well prepared for college, although that was the school’s mission.
So, he came back home and enrolled at Marshall where he studied acting. Looking back, he admits to being a real rebel and not applying himself. Dr. Elaine Novak was one of his professors and, despite his rebelliousness, she took note of Dourif’s obvious talent.
“At Marshall he gave a remarkable performance as Romeo in a production of Romeo and Juliet,” said Novak. “Even then you could tell there was something very special about him.”
During Dourif’s short time at Marshall, he and teacher John Benjamin developed a mentor/protégé relationship. That led him to spend time acting with the Community Players where Benjamin was the director. Dourif’s love of acting also drew him to perform in the third version of Marshall’s Barfenon Review, the satirical production that had sparked Marshall alumnus Conchata Ferrell’s love of theater a few years earlier. (Ferrell would go on to find great success in Hollywood appearing in dozens of films and television shows, most notably her 12-year role as Berta on Two and a Half Men.) By luck, Ferrell returned that year to see the Barfenon Review, met Dourif, and encouraged him to come to New York and join the Circle Repertory Theatre.
In 1969, he left Marshall for New York, where he roomed with Ferrell, “Chatty” as he calls her, to pursue his dreams. At Circle Rep he did a workshop production of When You Comin’ Back, Red Rider that later went to off-Broadway. There, famed movie director Milos Forman saw him and asked him to play the role of Billy Bibbet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
It was a defining moment very early in Dourif’s career. To say “he held his own” would be a huge understatement, since his performance as the stuttering, emotionally fragile Billy earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1975. In addition to the Oscar nomination, Dourif won a Golden Globe, a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) nomination, and other honors for the role. Dourif said the success was a bit overwhelming, so he walked away from other film offers and returned to New York where he taught acting at Columbia University for several years. In 1988, he made his way back to Hollywood and began a long film career.
When asked if the role of Billy Bibbit typecast him, Dourif admits it’s likely since many of his film roles have been in some of the most successful horror films of the last 30 years.
“It’s ironic because I couldn’t sit through a scary movie myself to save my life,” he admitted.
Not all of his roles fall in those genres, however. He played roles in The Gardener’s Son and Mississippi Burning to critical acclaim.
Dourif said having ADD has been both a curse and a blessing as an actor.
“In a way it’s kind of good because all that extra time that I have to spend learning lines keeps me really engaged with the script,” he explained. “So, I’ve thought it through pretty well by the time I’m ready to shoot. It’s forced me to become very disciplined. I don’t dare show up to do a film unless I have all the lines down before the first day.”
While he hasn’t been back to Marshall for several years, maybe now that he’s retired he will find time to visit his old stomping grounds, including the Huntington campus. Perhaps he’ll even pop in to the theater department and give some future actors a thrill. After all, it’s not every day that an Academy Award-nominated actor stops by to say hello. And, who knows, maybe Huntington leaders will take notice and recognize one of its most successful exports with a film festival of his best-known movies, honor him on the Wall of Fame, name a street after him or even throw a parade in his honor. Then, everyone in town will know who Brad Dourif is.
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About the Authors:
Carter Seaton is a freelance writer living in Huntington.
Clint McElroy co-authored The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins that reached No. 1 on The New York Times’ list of Paperback Trade Fiction.
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Photos (from second from the top):
From left, Don Mancini, Jennifer Tilly, Fiona Dourif, Brad Dourif and Alex Vincent attend a Cult Of Chucky panel during New York Comic Con in 2017. Brad was the voice of the serial killer doll, Chucky, in the Child’s Play series of slasher films. Chucky can be seen seated on the far right.
Brad Dourif and daughter Fiona attend the Los Angeles premiere of Deadwood: The Movie
on May 14, 2019.
