John C. McGinley

John Christopher McGinley (born August 3, 1959) is an American actor, writer, producer, author, a board member and international spokesman for the Global Down Syndrome Foundation, and a spokesman for the National Down Syndrome Society. His best known roles include Perry Cox in Scrubs, Bob Slydell in Office Space, Captain Hendrix in The Rock, Sergeant Red O'Neill in Oliver Stone's Platoon, Marv in Stone's Wall Street, FBI agent Ben Harp in Point Break, and the serial killer Edgler Foreman Vess in the TV miniseries of Intensity, based on the novel by Dean Koontz. Early life McGinley, who is one of five children, was born in the Greenwich Village section of New York City, the son of a schoolteacher and a stockbroker. His paternal great-grandfather was from Donegal, Ireland. McGinley was raised in Millburn, New Jersey, and attended Millburn High School, where he played wide receiver for the school's football team. He studied acting at Syracuse University, and later at New York University's Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 1984. Upon completing his education, McGinley did a variety of different work, including off-Broadway and Broadway productions, and a two-year stint on the soap opera Another World. Career McGinley has had a prolific career, primarily as a supporting character actor. He was noticed by a casting scout while working as John Turturro's understudy in John Patrick Shanley's 1984 production of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, which led to a successful audition for the role of Sergeant Red O'Neill in the Oscar-winning Platoon (1986). McGinley had been cast in his first film role in Alan Alda's Sweet Liberty earlier in 1986. That was followed the next year with Wall Street (1987), and again the next with Talk Radio (1988). He was featured in a 1980s Subaru commercial. He appeared in the "Celebrity Challenge" version of American Gladiators, losing to Dean Cain. McGinley wrote the script for, and co-starred in, the 1990 film Suffering Bastards. He worked continually throughout the 1990s, appearing in films such as Point Break (1991), Highlander II: The Quickening (1991), Article 99 (1992), Wagons East (1994), Seven (1995), The Rock (1996), Set It Off (1996), Nothing to Lose (1997) and Office Space (1999) (McGinley improvised several takes about his character's fondness for Michael Bolton).