Tom Noonan, a versatile and offbeat character actor, was born on April 12, 1951, in Connecticut. He began his career in various theater troupes, utilizing his skills as a guitarist and composer. After graduating from Yale's acting school, Noonan founded the Paradise Theatre in 1983, which played a significant role in his artistic growth.
As he transitioned to film and television in the 1980s, Noonan took on edgy and unsympathetic roles, including the notorious "Tooth Fairy" serial killer in Manhunter (1986),the first feature-length film to introduce the iconic Hannibal Lecter character. Although his early work was solid but unrewarding, appearing in films such as Easy Money (1983),Best Defense (1984),The Monster Squad (1987),and RoboCop 2 (1990),Noonan sought to expand his horizons by taking classes in writing and directing.
In the mid-1990s, Noonan's career received a boost with a series of mainstream roles, allowing him to finance his own play-turned-art house film project, What Happened Was... (1994). The film, which Noonan starred in alongside Karen Sillas, became a Sundance Film Festival darling, winning the Grand Jury Prize and earning an Independent Spirit nomination. The success of What Happened Was... inspired Noonan to finance another film, The Wife (1995),based on his Obie-winning play "Wifey," which co-starred Tom, Julie Hagerty, Wallace Shawn, and Karen Young.
Notable 90s TV work included roles in The X-Files (1993) and the miniseries North & South: Book 3, Heaven & Hell (1994),for which Noonan also composed the score. Throughout the millennium, Noonan appeared in a range of films, such as The Egoists (2003),Madness and Genius (2003),Seraphim Falls (2006),The Alphabet Killer (2008),The House of the Devil (2009),Night of the Wolf (2014),The Shape of Something Squashed (2014),and Wonderstruck (2017).
Noonan's television credits include appearances in "CSI," "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," and recurring roles on Damages (2007),Hell on Wheels (2011),and 12 Monkeys (2015). The New York-based actor continues to perform and teach acting at the Paradise Theatre, where many of his plays-turned-films originated.
