- Born
- Birth nameDirk Niewoehner
- Height5′ 11″ (1.80 m)
- Dirk Benedict was born in Montana on March 1st, 1945. He was raised in the country, far away from anything connected with movies or acting. He gathered his first experiences in acting (on a dare) in a college production of "Showboat" where he got the main part. His father, a lawyer, died when Dirk was 18, which was hard for him to take. While working on Georgia, Georgia (1972) in Sweden, he made the first contact with a macrobiotic diet and changed his eating habits drastically. He was 26 at that time. A few years later, doctors found that he had cancer of the prostate. He refused to accept the usual treatment and moved away to a secluded cottage. Dirk managed to cure himself from cancer by following the rules of his macrobiotic diet. When he got his part as "Starbuck" in Battlestar Galactica (1978), the doctors stated that he was in good health. Dirk's main successes were "Battlestar Galactica" and The A-Team (1983) in which he played "Templeton - The Face - Peck". He was formerly married to actress Toni Hudson and has two sons (George and Roland).- IMDb Mini Biography By: Sonja Horstmann <amyallen@hrz.uni-bielefeld.de>
- It's a long way from the vastness of Montana's Big Sky country to the vastness of outer space, but Dirk Benedict is taking the transition in stride. The actor's hometown of White Sulphur Springs, Montana, was so small that it lacked a television station. White Sulphur Springs, MT did have a motion picture theater! Benedict became the co-star in MCA TV's Battlestar Galactica (1978) as a skirt-chasing, fun-loving combat pilot aboard an embattled spaceship in a far-off galaxy.
It was at Whitman College, in Walla Walla, Washington, that Dirk became interested in acting. During his freshman year, he accepted a dare to audition for the Spring musical and won the lead role of "Gaylord Ravenal" in "Showboat". The next three years were filled with many more musical productions. Upon graduation, Benedict began a two-year training program under John Fernald, who had headed London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London for fifteen years. He then played repertory theatre in Seattle and in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he played such roles as "Edmund" in "King Lear", "Tarleton" in "Misalliance", "Ensign Pulver" in "Mister Roberts" and the lead in Neil Simon's "Star-Spangled Girl".
Meanwhile, Benedict maintained an active interest in music and formed a Dixieland Jazz Band in Seattle. Prior to their debut, he visited New York to meet an agent recommended by his college professor. Benedict never made it back to Seattle. The agent sent him to an audition which resulted in a co-starring role with Diana Rigg and Keith Michell in "Abelard and Heloise", first on Broadway, then in Los Angeles. Two weeks after the show closed on Broadway, he was winging across the Atlantic to Sweden for his first movie, Georgia, Georgia (1972) in which he co-starred with the late Diana Sands. This film about draft resisters, shot entirely in Sweden, was written by the well known writer Maya Angelou. In Sweden, Benedict lost his heart to Miss Sweden, discovered Akvavit and began a new way of eating based on whole grains and vegetables. On his return to New York, he replaced Keir Dullea in "Butterflies Are Free" on Broadway where he worked with the ever-young Gloria Swanson, as his mother. When the New York run ended, he received an offer to repeat his performance in Hawaii, opposite Barbara Rush. While there, he appeared as a guest on Hawaii Five-O (1968). The producers of a psycho-thriller called Sssssss (1973) saw Benedict's performance in Hawaii Five-O (1968) and promptly cast him as the lead in that movie. He next played the psychotic wife-beating husband of Twiggy in her American film debut, W (1974). Benedict starred in the television series, Chopper One (1974) then retreated to his cabin in the mountains of Montana where he spent nearly a year writing. Two of the scripts he wrote during that "sabbatical" were optioned for motion picture production and he is at work on his first novel, which will be set in Montana.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
- SpouseToni Hudson(May 31, 1986 - 1995) (divorced, 2 children)
- ChildrenGeorge William Niewoehner
- ParentsPriscilla Mella NiewoehnerGeorge Edward Niewoehner
- RelativesRoy Niewoehner(Sibling)Ramona Niewoehner(Sibling)
- After his parents divorced, Dirk's mother got a restraining order taken out against her ex-husband, prohibiting him from seeing the children at their own home. When Dirk was 18, his father violated the order and told Dirk to go fishing with him. Dirk's mother had previously told him to say whatever he needed to to get out of going with his father. Fed up, his father stormed into the house, was shot and killed by his older son, who also nearly shot Dirk when he followed their father into the living room.
- Once posed for a picture with actress Katee Sackhoff at a coffee shop, leading to the picture being titled, "Starbuck with Starbuck at Starbucks!" This was intended as a goodwill gesture after Benedict publicly attacked the Battlestar Galactica reboot, in particular Starbuck's re-imagining as a woman.
- Permanently lost 50% of the hearing in his left ear at the age of 12 when he tried climbing through a barbed wire fence while carrying a presumed unloaded gun and it went off next to his head.
- Has three sons: John born in 1968, and two younger sons, with Toni Hudson are George (born in 1988) and Roland (born in 1991).
- As a teenager, worked briefly as a gravedigger.
- [on the The A-Team (1983)] I enjoyed it immensely. By nature I'm terribly serious, so as an actor I tend to want to be silly. It was a comedic show, almost like a cartoon. We just had to hang on to enough reality to make it possible for adults to watch it. The actors I worked with, especially Mr. T and Dwight Schultz, were very funny people. It was pretty much four years of laughter.
- [on making The A-Team (1983)] The problem is that the people who created the show had no idea what it was. They didn't understand what the show was because it became something other than what they intended. The network hated us; the people in authority were like the military in the show, trying to control us. We took control of it. We made it much funnier than it was, and we made it much more politically incorrect than it was intended to be. All the liberals in Hollywood hated it; they hated the cigars, the guns, the bravado and the fact we always thought we were right.
- I'm only proud of two things in my life; one is my children, the second is my first book.
- [on Battlestar Galactica (2003)] Women are from Venus. Men are from Mars. Hamlet does not scan as Hamletta. Nor does Han Solo as Han Sally. Faceman is not the same as Facewoman. Nor does a Stardoe a Starbuck make. Men hand out cigars. Women "hand out" babies. And thus the world, for thousands of years, has gone round.
- Men create havoc. But women have the power of procreation, connection to the continuum of the universe, the creation of world harmony, health, happiness, and order.
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