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Peter Gallagher
Award-Winning Actor & Alzheimer’s Advocate
Peter Gallagher
Award-Winning Actor & Alzheimer’s Advocate
Biography
Peter Gallagher has delivered critically acclaimed performances in film, television and theatre. He has appeared in over many Hollywood films and is probably best known for his role as Sandy Cohen in on the hit TV series, The O.C, Chief Dodds in Law & Order: SVU, as well as Nick in Grace and Frankie and Dr. Hamilton on Grey’s Anatomy. Having lost both his mother and grandmother to Alzheimer’s disease, Gallagher is passionate about the quest for a cure and serves on the National Advisory Council of the Alzheimer’s Association.
In film, Gallagher made his debut in Taylor Hackford’s The Idolmaker. His many films include sex, lies & videotape and The Underneath for Steven Soderbergh, The Player and Short Cuts (Golden Globe Award) for Robert Altman, the Academy Award® winning American Beauty, for which he received a Screen Actors’ Guild award, and most recently, in the Sundance hit: Palm Springs. Other films include Dreamchild, High Spirits, Watch It, The Hudsucker Proxy, While You Were Sleeping, To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, The Man Who Knew Too Little, Center Stage, Mr. Deed and Humane.
Gallagher’s recent television work includes Truth Be Told, and was seen as Mitch in Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist and Mike Sullivan in Hallmark’s One December Night. Other TV projects include: New Girl, Covert Affairs, Mark and Jay Duplass’ comedy for HBO, Togetherness, Law & Order: SVU, How I Met Your Mother, and Schmidt’s dad on New Girl, the Emmy® and Peabody Award-winning miniseries The Murder of Mary Phagan, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial for Robert Altman, Fallen Angels for Steven Soderbergh, Togetherness, Californication, The OC as Sandy Cohen and HBO’s Path to Paradise.
Gallagher made his Broadway debut in the first revival of Hair and then joined the original Broadway production of Grease in the role of Danny Zuko. His Broadway credits include Left on Tenth, a play by Delia Ephron based on her bestselling memoir, directed by five-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman and also stars Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife), Guys and Dolls, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, (receiving a Tony Award Nomination), Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing also directed by Mike Nichols (Clarence Derwent Award), The Corn Is Green (Theatre World Award) and A Doll’s Life. He starred in The Royal National Theatre’s hit revival of Noises Off with Patti Lupone. Gallagher has also appeared with Kristin Chenoweth in, On The Twentieth Century and has co-starred with Frances McDormand and Morgan Freeman in the Mike Nichols’ Broadway production of The Country Girl, Harold Prince’s production of the Comden and Green musical, and has appeared in the musical A Doll’s Life.
As a singer, Gallagher recorded a solo album, 7 Days in Memphis, for Epic Records and is featured on the soundtracks for Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, On The Twentieth Century, Pal Joey, A Doll’s Life and others.
Gallagher was honored with a Light on the Hill Award and a Jumbo Award from Tufts University. He also received the Steve Chase Humanitarian Award from The Desert AIDS Project. He actively volunteers for Alzheimer’s-related causes and is presently co-chair of the National Board of Advisors for the Actor’s Fund.
Speech Topics
My Family’s Personal Legacy of Alzheimer’s
For 20 years before his mother’s death in 2004 at age 89, actor Peter Gallagher witnessed her gradual descent into the oblivion that characterizes Alzheimer’s, the disease that also took his grandmother. Slight memory lapses in the shy, fiercely intelligent Mary Ann O’Shea Gallagher gave way over time to a profound disconnection from the present, interrupted occasionally by breakthrough moments of clarity. Gallagher immersed himself in the search for a cure. He serves on the National Advisory Council of the Alzheimer’s Association, organizes Los Angeles-chapter fundraisers, and participates in fundraising Memory Walks, all with the unshakable belief that treatments for this devastating disease will be found before too long.
An Evening with Peter Gallagher
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