Actor

William
Petersen

William Petersen has a distinguished background in theater, film and television. In 1979, he founded the Remains Theater Ensemble in Chicago with a group of fellow actors including Gary Cole and Amy Morton and first appeared at Steppenwolf in the seminal 1980 production of Balm in Gilead. In 1983, Petersen starred as Jack Henry Abbott in In the Belly of the Beast at the Wisdom Bridge Theatre in Chicago, the Edinburgh Festival and The Kennedy Center. Petersen made his Broadway debut in a revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana in 1996 and appeared in a number of regional stage productions including Blackbird, Dublin Carol, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Time of Your Life, Glengarry Glen Ross, Fool for Love and Speed-the-Plow. His feature film credits include To Live and Die in L.A., Manhunter, Cousins, Young Guns II, Fear, The Contender and the films Hard Promises and Keep the Change, both of which he also produced. He serves as executive producer on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and was nominated in 2004 for a Golden Globe Award for his portrayal of Gil Grissom, the lead investigator. His television credits include Long Gone, The Rat Pack, the Golden Globe award-winning mini-series The Kennedys of Massachusetts and The Beast. Petersen was born in Evanston, Illinois and studied acting in Spain.