Timothy Olyphant

Timothy David Olyphant (born May 20, 1968) is an American actor.

He swam competitively throughout his childhood and was a finalist at the 1986 Nationals, in the 200m Individual Medley.

He was then recruited to the University of Southern California by USC Trojans swimming coach Peter Daland.

When Olyphant first visited the campus as part of a recruitment trip, he hoped to study architecture but was told it would be unmanageable with his training schedule.

Instead, he opted to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

However, Olyphant left university one elective shy of a degree; he returned to finish the degree 30 years later, taking an online course during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 1990, he planned to finish his degree and apply for a master's degree in fine arts and half-heartedly considered a career in commercial art.

While working as a swimming coach at Irvine Novaquatics, Olyphant decided to move to New York to explore other options.

He initially performed stand-up comedy: "I'd dabbled [before] and then there was a six-month period where I did it with a certain commitment. Then I'd occasionally go back."

Ultimately, he decided to become an actor.

In his final year of college, he had taken an acting class as an elective at UC Irvine and found it "really enjoyable".

He completed a two-year acting program at New York's William Esper Studio and began auditioning for roles.

He made his acting debut in an off-Broadway theater in 1995, in The Monogamist, and won the Theatre World Award for his performance, and then originated David Sedaris' The Santaland Diaries in 1996.

Olyphant's first paid acting job was in a 1995 WB television pilot based on 77 Sunset Strip.

Phyllis Huffman cast him in the role but he did not have an opportunity to meet the show's producer, Clint Eastwood, who quit days before filming began.

Later that year, he made his professional Off Broadway debut in the Playwrights Horizons' production of The Monogamist and received the Theatre World Award for Outstanding Debut Performance.

He starred in the world premiere of The SantaLand Diaries (1996) at the Atlantic Theater Company, a one-man play based on David Sedaris' essay about working as a Macy's department store Christmas elf.

Ben Brantley of The New York Times felt the "charming" Olyphant did "a wonderful job" when imitating other characters but had "a harder time finding a convincing style for the running narrative."

He then branched out to film; in the early years of his career, he was often cast in supporting villainous roles, most notably in Scream 2 (1997), Go (1999), Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), A Man Apart (2003), and The Girl Next Door (2004).

He came to the attention of a wider audience with his portrayal of Sheriff Seth Bullock in HBO's western Deadwood (2004–2006), later reprising the role in Deadwood: The Movie (2019).

He had starring roles in films such as Catch and Release (2006), Hitman (2007), A Perfect Getaway (2009), and The Crazies (2010), and he played the main antagonist, Thomas Gabriel, in Live Free or Die Hard (2007).

Olyphant was a recurring guest star in season two of the FX legal thriller Damages (2009).

From 2010 to 2015, Olyphant starred as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens in FX's modern-day Kentucky southern gothic Justified, a performance for which he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2011.

He has also had notable guest appearances in numerous television sitcoms including The Office (2010), The Mindy Project (2013), and The Grinder (2015–2016), for which he won a Critics' Choice Award.

Since the end of Justified, Olyphant has starred in films such as Mother's Day, Snowden (both 2016), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), and Amsterdam (2022).

He also starred in the Netflix comedy series Santa Clarita Diet (2017–2019).

In 2020, he played himself in a brief cameo, parodying his Justified character, in the NBC award-winning show The Good Place.

In the same year, he guest starred in season 10 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, as well as in the fourth season of Fargo and the second season of The Mandalorian in the episode "Chapter 9: The Marshal" as Cobb Vanth, a role he later reprised in The Book of Boba Fett.

Olyphant was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, but moved to Modesto, California, at the age of two.

His parents are Katherine (née Gideon) and John Vernon Bevan Olyphant, who worked as vice president of production at Gallo Winery.

He has an older brother, Andrew, and a younger brother, Matthew.

His parents divorced when Olyphant was a teenager; both remarried.

He is of English, German, Scottish, Dutch, Irish, and one-eighth Russian-Jewish ancestry.

Olyphant is a descendant of the Vanderbilt family of New York.

His paternal fourth great-grandfather was family patriarch Cornelius Vanderbilt; his third great-grandfather was William Henry Vanderbilt, who doubled the family's railroad fortune; his great-grandmother was socialite Emily Vanderbilt Sloane; and his great-uncle was music producer John Hammond.

The surname Olyphant is of Scottish origin.

Another paternal fourth great-grandfather, Dr. David Olyphant, was born in Scotland and served as director-general of the Southern hospitals during the American Revolutionary War.

His third great-grandfather, David Olyphant, and great-great-grandfather, Robert Morrison Olyphant, were both prominent businessmen.

Olyphant attended Modesto's Fred C. Beyer High School.

Growing up, he was "embarrassed" by the idea of acting, but enjoyed art and drawing.