Made off-Broadway debut at age 17; later appeared on Broadway with Sean Penn, Val Kilmer and Kevin Bacon in the 1983 drama Slab Boys
Television debut was in the 1981 NBC drama The Gangster Chronicles, with his wife-to-be Madeleine Stowe playing his character's wife
Played '60s radical (and onetime husband of Jane Fonda) Tom Hayden in the 1987 TV-movie Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8
Was a regular on the short-lived CBS medical drama Kay O'Brien (1986), but his breakout role was as divorced book editor Martin Tupper in the Thurberesque 1990-96 HBO comedy Dream On
His 1998 TV-newsroom sitcom The Brian Benben Show lasted for only eight episodes
With Stowe, owns a cattle ranch in the Texas Hill Country