Bradford Dillman was born in San Francisco, California on April 14, 1930. He received a bachelor's degree in literature from Yale University in 1951. He served in the Marines during the Korean War and reached the rank of first lieutenant before his discharge in 1953.
He began acting professionally in 1953. In 1956, he played Edmund Tyrone in the original Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. He received a 1957 Theater World Award and a contract with 20th Century Fox. He appeared in numerous films including Compulsion, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, and The Iceman Cometh. He received a Golden Globe for most promising newcomer in 1959 and a Daytime Emmy Award in 1975 for his work on the TV series The ABC Afternoon Playbreak.
He also wrote fiction and nonfiction books. His novels included That Air Forever Dark and Kissing Kate. His nonfiction works included Inside the New York Giants, Dropkick: A Football Fantasy, and Are You Anybody? An Actor's Life. He died from complications of pneumonia on January 16, 2018 at the age of 87.
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