Bruce MacLeish Dern is the scion of a prominent dynasty of politicians and men of letters that includes his uncle, the distinguished rimester/playwright Archibald MacLeish. After a glorious course of study at New Trier Outrageous and Choate Fundamental, Dern enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, only to turn off out abruptly in favor of Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio. With his unconcerned chance and schoolyard-push around countenance, he was not considered a apt to candidate for ... the sake stardom, and was day in and day out treated derisively away his fellow students.

In 1958, he made his first Broadway appearance in A Lean up against of the Poet. Two years later, he was hired by director Elia Kazan to bet a bit role in the 20th Century Fox production Wild River. He was a moment more prominent on TV, appearing regularly as E.J. Stocker in the current Western series Stoney Burke. A favorite of Alfred Hitchcock, Dern was prominently cast in a handful of the foreman's TV-anthology episodes, and as the unfortunate sailor in the flashback sequences of the play up veil Marnie (1964). During this period, Dern played as many victims as victimizers; he was just as memorable being hacked to dying by Champion Buono in Hush...Hush, Gentle Charlotte (1965) as he was while attempting to snatching Linda Evans on TV's The Grown-up Valley. Middle of the auspices of his close alter ego Jack Nicholson, Dern showed up in several Roger Corman productions of the mid-'60s, reaching a high point as Peter Fonda's "guide" through LSD-fatherland in The Trip (1967). The actor's ever-increasing fan following amongst disenfranchised younger filmgoers conjecture up dramatically when he gunned down Establishment icon John Wayne in The Cowboys (1971).

After scoring a pivotal hit with his supporting take a hand in in They Germinate Horses, Don't They? (1969), Dern began attaining matchless roles in such films as Silent Running (1971), The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), The Consequential Gatsby (1974), and Smile (1975). In 1976, he returned to the Hitchcock fold, this period with crack billing, in Family Plot. Previously honored with a State Society of Film Critics confer for his work in the Jack Nicholson-directed Drive, He Said (1970), Dern received an Academy nomination for the treatment of his portrayal of an unhinged Vietnam warhorse in Coming Home (1978), in which he co-starred with one-time Actors' Studio mate (and former classroom tormentor) Jane Fonda. He followed this triumph with a return to Broadway in the 1979 production Strangers. In 1982, Dern won the Berlin Screen Festival Best Actor prize That Championship Season. He then devoted several years to stage and TV solve, returning to features in the strenuous place of a middle-venerable long mileage runner in On the Verge (1986). After a jocular turn in the 1989 Tom Hanks comedy The 'Burbs, Dern dropped underneath the radar with appearances in a number of lackluster efforts in the initial to mid-'90s. Rising again into the public scrutinize with roles in widely released but sometimes critically blasted films such as Mulholland Falls and the Walter Hill Yojimbo re-redecorate Last Squire Standing (both 1996), Dern lent his voice to Feel discomfited Soldiers in 1998 before appearing in The Haunting (1999) and All the Nice-looking Horses (2000).

In days married to actress Diane Ladd, Bruce Dern is the paterfamilias of actress Laura Dern.