Elias Koteas

Early in ELIAS KOTEAS' career, director Francis Ford Coppola cast the actor in Gardens of Stone and Tucker: The Man and His Dream. Koteas then landed a role in Peter Masterson's Full Moon in Blue Water and was chosen for the lead role in Roger Cardinal's explosive Malarek, playing true-life investigative journalist Victor Malarek. Koteas' haunting performance earned him the first of his two Genie Award nominations (Canada's Oscar ®) for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role.

Koteas broke out as an international sensation after his starring role in Crash, David Cronenberg's highly controversial exploration of sexual provocation and alienation, which was awarded The Jury Prize at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. Koteas has worked on several occasions with one of Canada's most accomplished directorial exports, Atom Egoyan, starring in Egoyan's The Adjuster, Exotica, for which Koteas garnered a Genie Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, and Ararat, for which he won the Genie for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role.

Koteas has portrayed notable roles in many films, including Steven Shainberg's Hit Me, a modern noir adaptation of Jim Thompson's “A Swell-Looking Babe”; Gattaca, starring Uma Thurman, Ethan Hawke and Jude Law; Gregory Hoblit's supernatural thriller Fallen, opposite Denzel Washington; Bryan Singer's Apt Pupil; Living Out Loud, with Holly Hunter and Danny DeVito; Terrence Malick's Academy Award® nominated film The Thin Red Line; Novocaine, with Steve Martin and Helena Bonham Carter; Harrison’s Flowers, alongside Andie MacDowell and Adrien Brody; David Fincher's Zodiac, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo; Antoine Fuqua's Shooter, with Mark Wahlberg; David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett; The Haunting in Connecticut, alongside Virginia Madsen; Two Lovers, opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow; Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island; Defendor, with Woody Harrelson and Kat Dennings; Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me; and Let Me In, a remake of the award-winning and critically acclaimed Swedish film Let the Right One In.

Koteas was seen in the feature film Winnie, in which he played a South African apartheid supporter, opposite Jennifer Hudson and Terrence Howard (as Winnie and Nelson Mandela), and A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, the third film in the Harold & Kumar franchise.

On television, Koteas was a series regular on the ABC series Combat Hospital, set in a medical compound in Afghanistan. Koteas played Colonel Xavier Marks, a career military officer and commander of a multinational medical unit. Koteas has given several critically hailed performances in such programs as USA Network's Emmy-nominated miniseries Traffic; the HBO original movie Shot in the Heart, in which he played notorious murderer Gary Gilmore; HBO's Sugartime, opposite John Turturro and Mary-Louise Parker; and House M.D., in which he played Hugh Laurie's nemesis.

Koteas has starred in numerous theater productions, including Paula Vogel's Hot ’n Throbbing, at the Signature Theatre; Kiss of the Spider Woman, at the Yale Repertory Theatre; and True West, on Broadway, directed by Matthew Warchus.

Koteas is a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and a member of the prestigious Actors Studio.

© 2011 Universal Pictures