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Eric Thal
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Born: Aug 10, 1965
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Eric Thal was born in York City, New York, USA. He attended Haverford Preparatory School in Haverford, Pennsylvania. He then moved on to attend Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania where he majored in engineering. With the encouragement of his acting teacher Richard Bruer he left school after one year to pursue acting. At The Neighbourhood Playhouse Theatre he studied with Richard Pinter and studied classical theatre with Ada Brown Mather.
After working in commercials and as a magician in New York City, he auditioned for a small role in Sidney Lumet's film A Stranger Among Us. Lumet was so impressed by the young actor, the director invited back to audition for the leading role. Although he had virtually no professional credits, Thal landed the role of an Hasidic scholar who becomes involved with an undercover police officer (Melanie Griffith).
He subsequently played a police officer in the farcical The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag and followed up with a small role in Six Degrees of Separation, as a heterosexual driven to suicide after an intimate encounter with a con artist (Will Smith).
Thal later co-starred as Donald Sutherland's disaffected son in The Puppet Masters and as a man who must face romance after the excitement has worn off in Joe's So Mean to Josephine. He segued to the small screen playing the hirsute strongman in the TNT Biblical epic Samson and Delilah, opposite Elizabeth Hurley.
click here to see him in action
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