Edward Furlong

EDWARD FURLONG

Date of Birth: August 2, 1977

Born in Glendale, California and raised in Pasadena, Edward Furlong got into the acting business by chance rather than ambition. Spotted at a youth club by a roving casting director, Furlong found himself chosen over the hundreds of professional child actors to play the young John Connor in James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

The huge box-office success of T2 brought Furlong instant recognition, and his performance also won him critical praise and a clutch of awards. From there he didn't take the obvious career routes. Most of his subsequent films, rather than being teen flicks or more blockbuster fare, were small and decidedly uncommercial. He established himself as an art-house actor with acclaimed performances in the high-quality indie dramas American Heart and Little Odessa. Apart from one foray, not particularly successful, into the mainstream with Before and After, he has kept to his pattern of an established presence in independent film, sometimes referred to as "the arthouse DiCaprio".

Finally, late in 1998, Furlong found the break he needed with two very different films, Pecker and American History X.

In John Waters' quirky Pecker, Furlong was cast as the title character, a budding young photographer who takes pictures of his friends and family in his Baltimore hometown and is suddenly discovered by a big New York art dealer. Furlong showed his versatility at playing comedic satire as well as he had played his more dramatic roles.

In fact, his versatility was even further displayed just one month after Pecker when he appeared opposite Edward Norton in Tony Kaye's stark saga on neo-Nazi racism, American History X. Furlong played Danny Vineyard, the impressionable younger brother of Norton's Derek, who is seduced by hateful white supremacists while his brother is serving time in prison. While the film suffered from the controversy surrounding its director's feud with the film's releasing studio, it gave Furlong the opportunity to fully utilize his immense acting talent. With both Pecker and American History X to his credit, Furlong then appeared in Detroit Rock City which centres on four teens attending a KISS concert in 1978. On the side, he turned to his first love, music, and released an album titled Hold on Tight, which has been a huge success in Japan. Next, he stars in the Steve Buscemi-directed film The Animal Factory opposite Willem Dafoe, which premiered at Sundance in January 2000.

In 2006, Edward was cast in a starring role as Shane Casey, in the TV series CSI: NY. That same year, Edward married actress Rachael Bella. Their son, Ethan Page Furlong, was born on September 21, 2006, but Rachael obtained a restraining order against Edward in August 2010 and they are currently going through a divorce.