Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia

subtle, incisive actor whom director Robert Altman says "has qualities that could make him the next Orson Welles." Robbins grew up in Greenwich Village (his father is actor and folksinger Gil Robbins of The Highwaymen) and was surrounded by politics and theater at a young age. After two years at the State University of New York, he returned to California and studied theater at UCLA. He cofounded a theater company called the Actors' Gang, which became known for its innovative, avant-garde productions and attracted members like John Cusack. (Robbins is still very active with the group.) During this time, he took small roles in films like No Small Affair (1984), Fraternity Vacation (1985), and The Sure Thing (1985), and was featured in the disastrous Howard the Duck (1986). Following a role in Top Gun (1986), Robbins gained his first critical attention as the civil rights worker Harry in Five Corners (1988), and then scored a popular success as Ebby "Nuke" LaLoosh, the wild rookie pitcher in Bull Durham (1988). He followed with two comedy flops, Tapeheads (1989, opposite Cusack), and Erik the Viking (1989), but received strong reviews for his roles in Miss Firecracker (1989), Cadillac Man (1990), and especially Jacob's Ladder (1990), in the leading role, as a hallucinating Vietnam vet. Robbins really came into his own with back-to-back films in 1992: first, as unscrupulous studio executive Griffin Mill in Robert Altman's acid Hollywood comedy The Player (1992), a dead-on performance that earned him the Best Actor Award at Cannes. Next came Bob Roberts (1992), a pet project Robbins wrote and directed (inspired by a short film he made in 1986 for TV's "Saturday Night Live"), in which he starred as a manipulative, ultraconservative, folk-singing senatorial candidate. (Robbins also wrote the film's songs with his brother.) Both films showcased Robbins' keen intelligence and the ability, as Bill Zehme wrote, "to be at once contemptible and attractive-the rarest of gifts" (though he was able to sacrifice those qualities to play a likable dummy in the Coen brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy in 1994). He reunited with Altman for Short Cuts (1993) and Ready to Wear/Pràt-ê-Porter (1994), and starred in the prison drama The Shawshank Redemption and the romantic comedy I.Q (both 1994). Robbins and actress Susan Sarandon met during the filming of Bull Durham and have been together ever since; they have two children.
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