Michael Schoeffling mini-bio:
Michael Schoeffling was born December 10, 1960 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and raised in South Jersey. He is a former actor, and male model, best known for his role as Jake Ryan in Sixteen Candles.
Schoeffling is best known for his role as Jake Ryan in Sixteen Candles, serving as a legendary lust object amongst generations of fans. On Valentine's Day of 2004 a full twenty years after the film's American premiere, the Washington Post ran an article entitled "Real Men Can't Hold a Match to Jake Ryan of Sixteen Candles", which celebrated Michael, and his character Jake's enduring popularity.
Michael has been unable to duplicate the same level of success he saw with his role in Sixteen Candles, and in various magazine and newspaper interviews stated the lack of roles and a family to feed were his reasons for retiring from acting. He now lives with his wife Valerie Robinson, also a former model, and their two teenaged children in Greentown, Pennsylvania, producing handcrafted furniture as the owner of a woodworking shop.
Michael graduated from Cherokee High School in New Jersey, and majored in Liberal Arts at Temple University in Philadelphia. In the mid-1980s he began modeling for GQ, and star photographer Bruce Weber paid for his acting classes at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Manhattan.
An accomplished youth and collegiate wrestler, Michael has won medals in various national and international tournaments. He won a gold medal for the United States in freestyle wrestling, as a member of the National Junior Wrestling Team in the European Championships held in Munich, Germany in 1978. His considerable wrestling skills were downplayed as "Kuch" in Vision Quest, where he wrestled Matthew Modine, his team mate in the movie, and lost by fall in a wrestle off.
ksblposted 382 days ago
