Caroline in the City

Background:

Tony-nominated American actor Malcolm Gets has created a prolific career on the stage since making his professional debut as a teenager in a local production of “Annie Get Your Gun” (1978). The Chicago, Illinois-born,Gainesville, Florida-bred acquired critical accolades for his work in “Merrily We Roll Along” (1994, nabbed a Drama Desk nomination), “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” (1994, won an Obie Award and St. Clair Bayfield Award) and “A New Brain” (1998) before finally brought home his Tony nomination for his portrayal of Dusoleil in the musical “Amour” (2002). However, Gets is probably best recalled as depressive cartoonist Richard Karinsky on the Lea Thompson sitcom “Caroline in the City” (NBC, 1995-1999). On the movie front, the versatile actor, who made his debut in 1984's “A Flash of Green,” was noted as F. Scott Fitzgerald on Alan Rudolph's “Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle” (1994) and co-won a Florida Film Critics Circle Award for his performance in the award-winning “Thirteen Conversations About One Thing” (2001). Other films in which he has acted in include “Love in the Time of Money” (2002), “Adam & Steve” (2005) and “Grey Gardens” (2008, now in post-production). Apart from being an actor, Gets is also a dancer, singer, classically trained pianist, composer, vocal director and choreographer.

The 6' 1” performer is an openly gay. He stated, “I was always out. I was out when I was in high school. So I never hid who I was. I’d always lived my life openly, I always took my partner to the big Hollywood events, everybody knew my partner. It was not a big deal.”

Gets enjoys any kinds of music, but he cites classical as his favorite. He is a fan of composer Stephen Sondheim. In his free time, the longtime buff of the TV show “All in the Family” loves cooking and reading.

Multi-talented Hugh

Childhood and Family:

Hugh Malcolm Gerard Gets was born on December 28, 1964, in Chicago, Illinois, to British parents Lispeth Gets, a special education teacher and school administrator, and Terrence Gets, a college textbook salesman. The third of four children, he has an older brother, Eric, an older sister, Allison, and a younger sister. Hugh moved with his family to New Jersey shortly after his birth and stayed there until age 5. The Gets then relocated to Gainesville, Florida, where Hugh spent the rest of his formative years. A vividly earnest student, he skipped the 8th grade at Fort Clarke Middle School and the 12th grade at Buchholz High School. By age 16, he had attended college at University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, where he won Best Newcomer's Award in acting. After receiving a BFA in theater in 1989, he went on to pursue his MFA degree at the prestigious Yale Drama School.

In addition to his academic achievement, Hugh showed great interest in performing arts at an early age. He started to practice the piano around age 8 or 9 and started singing at age 14. As a teenager, he danced with Pofahl Studios in Gainesville, while working as an accompanist at a local theater where he also attended workshops. It was from playing the piano that the vigorous Hugh could support his tuition in college.

Amour

Career:

An aspiring classical pianist, Malcolm Gets began his training early in life and by the time he was a teenager, he was composing music for the Hippodrome, a local theater in Gainesville where he also made his stage debut in a production of “Annie Get Your Gun” (1978). The appealing blond continued playing piano at weddings, bar-mitzvahs and concert halls while honing his acting skills in a number of plays, including “Next Stop Greenwich Village,” “Twelfth Night,” “West Side Story,” “Amadeus” and “Cloud 9.” In 1984, the former stockboy in Barney's moved on to feature film to portray Jigger in the based-on-novel drama “A Flash of Green,” which was shot in Florida. The very powerful indie directed and co-penned by Victor Nunez also featured Ed Harris as Jimmy Wing and Maggie Beistle as Dellie Bliss and Blair Brown as Kat Hubble.

Gets returned to the stage in the following year to serve as the co-director, choreographer and pianist for Hippodrome's production of “Ain't Misbehavin'.” A 1989 graduate of the University of Florida, he went to train at Yale from 1989 to 1992, during which time he performed in such productions as “Fathers and Sons,” “Hamletmachine,” “Richard the 3rd,” “Stage Door,” “The Name of Oedipus (Jocasta),” “King Lear,” “Hamlet” and “The Colorado Catechism.” Gets made his off-Broadway debut after graduating from Yale in the Marc Blizstein musical “Juno” (1992) and in the following year, he undertook the lead in Hartford Stage Company production of musical “The Return of Martin Guerre” and was featured in the Off-Broadway musical “Hello, Again” at Lincoln Center. Also in 1993, he resumed his TV career by making guest appearances in the series “South Beach,” as Jim Bradley, and “Law & Order,” as Lance Keys.

In 1994, Gets received attention for his roles as Frank Shepard in the Off-Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's “Merrily We Roll Along” and Proteus in the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” in Central Park. The performances won the stage-trained actor a 1995 Drama Desk nomination for Best Actor in a Musical, and an Obie Award and the honored St. Clair Bayfield Award for Outstanding Classical Performance, respectively. Still in that same year, Gets attained additional notice on the big screen with his cameo turn as F. Scott Fitzgerald on the Alan Rudolph-directed biopic “Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle,” starring Jennifer Jason Leigh in the title role. He also landed a recurring role on the CBS soap opera “As the World Turns,” where he was cast as Ron Gillette.

However, Gets did not gain massive screen success until he won the regular role of the sour, gloomy colorist Richard Karinsky on the NBC sitcom “Caroline in the City,” opposite Lea Thompson as the Manhattan-based successful cartoonist Caroline Duffy. Debuted on September 21, 1995, the show was not a hit with critics, but it did enjoy prosperity for several years, during which time Get's character developed from Caroline's employee into her lover. When the comedy series started to decline before eventually being canceled in 1999, the actor returned to the New York City stage to

star as Gordon Michael Schwinn, an aspiring theater composer suffers from a vital brain tumor, in the 1998 musical “A New Brain,”penned by William Finn and directed by James Lapine. His performance in the play earned critical plaudits.

A year after the cancellation of “Caroline in the City,” Gets could be seen in San Francisco production of “Edward II” (2000) at American Conservatory Theatre. In the Christopher Marlowe-helmed play, he starred as the homosexual. He then acted in the Broadway production

of “Dreamgirls” (2001, as film executive) and was nominated for a Tony for Best Actor (Musical) for his portrayal of Dusoleil in “Amour” (2002). During that period, he also appeared as an architect in the critically acclaimed feature “Thirteen Conversations About One Thing” (2001), from which he jointly nabbed a 2003 Florida Film Critics Circle for Best Ensemble Cast, and played the supporting role of Robert Walker on the drama/comedy film “Love in the Time of Money” (2002).

After playing Colonel Ricci in the Broadway production of “Passion” (2004), Gets starred as a gay man, opposite Chris Kattan as a heterosexual, in the homosexual-themed “Adam & Steve” (2005), the feature film directorial debut of Craig Chester. He also participated in a short film by John McCrite called “Little Boy Blues” (2005).

Gets will play George 'Gould' Strong in the upcoming film “Grey Gardens,” which is expecting to debut at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2008. The based-on-documentary drama stars Drew Barrymore as 'Little' Edith Bouvier Beale, Jeanne Tripplehorn as Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Daniel Baldwin as Julius Krug and Jessica Lange as 'Big' Edith Bouvier Beale and is directed by Michael Sucsy.

Awards:

• Florida Film Critics Circle: Best Ensemble Cast, “Thirteen Conversations About One Thing,” 2003