Bradley Whitford has appeared in many different varieties of films and television series throughout his illustrious career, but he is likely best known for his starring role as Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman on the NBC drama The West Wing. In 2001, he won an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor for his work on the show. He also received two Golden Globe nominations for his work on the show and shared two SAG awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.
Prior to his rise to fame, he appeared in films such as Dead as a Doorman (1985), Adventures in Babysitting (1987), Presumed Innocent (1990), and the Oscar-winning Scent of a Woman (1992). Bradley would also go on to land roles in The MuseBicentennial Man (1999), alongside Robin Williams.
His first big break in came in 1985 when he appeared on the television show The Equalizer. From there, Bradley was cast in four episodes of NYPD Blue and appeared on other hit TV series such as The X Files. He also was given a role as Eric Gordon, the enemy of Adam Sandler's character in the movie Billy Madison (1995).
Growing up in Wisconsin, Bradley got involved in theater in high school, and although he enjoyed it, at the time he didn't think it was something he could make a living doing. However, he must have changed his mind when he majored in English and Theater at Wesleyan University before earning a master's degree in theater from the renowned Juilliard Theater Centre. Shortly after that, Bradley made his professional acting debut in an off-Broadway production of Curse of the Starving Glass, starring Kathy Bates. He went on to perform on Broadway in plays such as Three Days of Rain and Measure to Measure.
Bradley also has experience in the field of journalism, writing occasional columns for Huffington Post in the past. His brother David, works as an editor for Fortune magazine.
Bradley was married to actress Jane Kaczmarek for 18 years before they divorced in 2010. They have three children together. In 2002 Bradley and Jane founded the charity Clothes off our Back, which ran online auctions to sell the clothing celebrities had worn to awards shows, with the proceeds going to children's charities.
In 2015 Bradley won a second Primetime Emmy Award, this time for a guest appearance on an episode of the Amazon TV series Transparent.
Recently, he played a prominent role in the Jordan Peele directed thriller Get Out (2017), as Dean Armitage, the father of co-star Allison Williams' character. Bradley also co-starred in the film Megan Leavey (2017), based on the true story of a young Marine in Iraq. His latest credit is a role in the 2018 drama The Post. He was seen in the thriller Destroyer (2019) alongside Nicole Kidman, played a role in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), and appeared in the Harrison Ford film The Call of the Wild (2020).
