Photo
- Caption: William Atherton - Playing adult David Moran in Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door (2007)
- Description:
William Atherton entered pop culture history in 1984, when he starred in the hit comedy Ghostbusters as the overbearing, vindictive EPA agent Walter Peck. The film proved that Atherton was good at essaying characters who were essentially white collar sleaze: selfish, annoying, and unscrupulous individuals with little regard for anything other than their own greed and ambition. In 1985, Martha Coolidge chose Atherton to play Professor Jerry Hathaway in the teen comedy Real Genius. Hathaway is a professor and TV lecturer who blithely uses a government grant to build a new house while bullying his students into developing a laser powerful and precise enough to destroy single targets from orbit. Hathaway receives an even more memorable comeuppance than Walter Peck. His students reprogram the laser’s coordinates through a prism into Hathaway’s new house, cooking an enormous amount of popcorn that eventually fills the house.
In 1988, Atherton played the pushy, sensationalistic reporter Dick Thornburg in the blockbuster action film Die Hard, as well as its 1990 sequel. Both films parodied network news, especially Thornburg’s relentlessness and insensitivity at getting the big story. As in his previous roles, Atherton’s character received embarrassing comeuppances at the end of both films and was generally loathed, even for the most part by his own colleagues.
Other film credits include No Mercy, The Pelican Brief, Bio-Dome, Mad City, The Crow: Salvation, The Last Samurai, the TV movies Buried Alive, Headspace and Virus. He has also made guest appearances on such TV shows as The Twilight Zone, Desperate Housewives, The Equalizer, and Law & Order. Atherton also provided the voice of Dr. Destiny/John Dee on Justice League. - Actor/Actress/Director: William Atherton
- Movie: The Girl Next Door ( photos )
- Id: 11446577
- Share This Photo
- Add to My Scrapbook
- Upload a Photo
Talk while you gawk
Refresh
