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Robert Clark Profile |
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Birth Date: August 20, 1986
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Birth Place: Chicago, Illinois, USA
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Birth Name: Robert Clark
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Height: 6'0"
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Biography |
Robert Clark is an American-Canadian actor. After building
up years of experience in singing, stage and limited
television work in the 1990s, he has gone on to receive
critical and public recognition for his roles in various
small screen productions, most notably The Zack Files and
Strange Days at Blake Holsey High.
Clark was born Chicago, Illinois, and in 1988 his mother,
Suzanne, relocated her and her two sons to Boca Raton,
Florida. When she re-married in 1991, the entire family
moved near Toronto, Canada. Clark joined the Belfountain
Singers (based in Caledon, Ontario), and performed at
various live concerts, both with the group and solo. The
Singers performed at the 1997 Winter Special Olympics, and
they also sang on the national talk show Open Mike with Mike
Bullard. Clark (with his brother, Daniel) attended the
Randolph School for the Performing Arts, and successfully
completed the school's Kids Triple-Threat Musical Theatre
Program.
Clark's very first professional acting role was opposite
hockey player Wayne Gretzky in a television commercial for
Honeycomb Cereal. Under his mother's guidance, he used his
previous singing experience in auditions for stage
productions such as Lyla Rules.Ragtime (1998) and Beauty and
the Beast, though he lost the role in the latter to his
brother. He subsequently managed to clinch a recurring role
in the television show I Was a Sixth Grade Alien (starring
his brother), and made several guest appearances in programs
such as Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension (also starring
his brother), Real Kids, Real Adventures, and Twice in a
Lifetime.
Clark's acting career was not limited to the small screen,
however; in Superstar (1999), Clark was Eric Slater (Harland
Williams) as a child. He later won small parts in a few
television movies: Switching Goals (1999) with Mary-Kate and
Ashley Olsen, as a Goth in The Ride (2000), and in
All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story (2000), as
the son of real-life convicted child rapist Mary Kay
Letourneau.
In Rated X (2000), a fact-based film directed by and
starring Emilio Estevez, Clark played the younger version of
Charlie Sheen's character; a boy physically abused by his
father who would grow up to become an adult film director.
Following this, Clark had a more prominent role as a street
windscreen wiper who donates his life savings of $4.30 to a
murder investigation in the A&E Network's original film The
Golden Spiders: A Nero Wolfe Mystery, the pilot for the A&E
series A Nero Wolfe Mystery. Variety's Steve Oxman spoke
highly of the production, calling the cast "a stellar
ensemble" and noting that "the performances are more than
the sum of their parts".
His first lead role came in the science fiction television
show The Zack Files (2000), which its creators described as
"an X-Files for kids". The show lasted just two seasons, but
for his efforts Clark won a Young Artist Award for Leading
Young Actor in a Drama Series, and producer John Delmage
said that Clark and his co-stars were chosen for their
acting ability and had the potential to maintain careers in
the profession as adults.
The filming schedule for The Zack Files was tight, but Clark
found time to participate in other projects. He played the
son of a sex addict (Harry Hamlin) in Sex, Lies & Obsession
(2001), and also acted opposite John Corbett in the
Christmas film Prancer Returns (2001), which went
direct-to-video but was praised by critic Scott Weinberg,
and earned Clark another Young Artist Award.
Shortly after the cancellation of The Zack Files, Clark was
cast in a similar television series, Strange Days at Blake
Holsey High, which was first broadcast in the autumn of
2002. Clark's acting performance was well-received; in
addition to another Young Artist nomination, Family Screen
Scene called the show as a whole "well written and acted.
The looks and mannerisms of the teens fit their characters,
adding realism to their roles". While Strange Days was on
the air, Clark could be seen in the Sci-Fi Channel's
Deathlands (2003), as the young son of a deceased future
king who narrowly escapes death at the hands of his
power-hungry brother.
In an April 2005 episode of Veronica Mars, Clark played an
openly gay teenager recruited by the title character
(Kristen Bell) to publicly humiliate the prejudiced
ex-boyfriend (Jeff D'Agostino) of one of her friends
(Natalia Baron). Reviewing the episode, John Ramos of the
website Television Without Pity commented positively on
Clark's appearance, making an earnest request to "give the
gay kid more screen time". Clark also had a supporting role
as one of the ten children of a 1950s housewife (Julianne
Moore) in the film drama The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio,
released to theatres in late 2005. |
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Other Information |
Brother of Daniel Clark.
Half-brother of Aaron Brown. |
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since October 19, 2008