William Atherton
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William Atherton (born William Atherton Knight on July 30, 1947 in Orange, Connecticut, USA) is an American film, theatre and television actor. Although Atherton has played many roles over the years, he is perhaps best known for his ability to play smarmy, spiteful authority figures in films like Ghostbusters and Real Genius.
After a handful of small film roles, Atherton got his big break playing hapless fugitive Clovis Poplin in the well-praised The Sugarland Express, now best known for being the feature film debut of Steven Spielberg. After this, he garnered major roles in dark dramas such as Looking for Mr. Goodbar and The Day of the Locust, as well as the big-budget disaster film The Hindenburg. He also played the lead in the 1978 miniseries Centennial (miniseries), based on the novel by James Michener.
Atherton entered pop culture history in 1984, when he starred in the hit comedy Ghostbusters as the overbearing, vindictive EPA agent Walter Peck. Although the role gave him a massive amount of exposure, Atherton became frustrated with audiences overidentifying him with his character. In the film, Atherton's character is memorably referred to as "dickless" and rude jokes are also made at the expense of his surname (Peck/pecker), which unfortunately inspired people on the street to refer to him as such, including, at one point, an entire New York tour bus. Atherton was also almost injured on the set while filming Peck's comeuppance. 200 pounds of shaving cream were dumped on him from a crane to simulate a torrent of molten marshmallow engulfing the fanatical EPA agent, almost knocking him off his feet.
Ghostbusters 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.
According to writer/director Kevin Smith, Atherton was his first choice to play the odious Jared Svenning, the chief villain of his 1995 film Mallrats. Atherton considered the film childish and turned it down, although Smith humorously added that Atherton had elected instead to play a role in the Pauly Shore vehicle Bio-Dome.
