Robert Culp Biography

Fast Facts

• Became interested in acting as a boy and staged marionette shows before performing in community-theater productions at age 14
• Earned money as a teen drawing cartoons for San Francisco Bay-area newspapers and magazines
• Standout in track and field, specializing in the pole vault, and was offered athletic scholarships to six colleges
• Achieved success on the New York stage in He Who Gets Slapped and A Clearing in the Woods; performed in the first U
• S
• staging of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
• First lead role on TV came in 1957 as Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman on Trackdown before his breakout success on I Spy in 1965, for which he wrote the pilot script and six other episodes
• Was nominated for three consecutive Emmys for I Spy, but lost each time to costar Bill Cosby
• Active in the civil-rights movement; produced and directed the acclaimed civil-rights documentary Operation Breadbasket
• Biggest film success came in 1969 with Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
• Lone film directed was 1972's Hickey & Boggs
• Returned to TV prominence on The Greatest American Hero in 1981 as an FBI agent helping a superhero
• Broadened his fan base as Ray's father-in-law on Everybody Loves Raymond