Richard Beymer

Born in Avoca, Iowa and moved with his parents to Hollywood, California in the late 1940s, Richard Beymer acted in various films while attending North Hollywood High School. He enjoys making his own films and has a film used in a PBS series on the civil rights movement.Iowa-born Richard Beymer's most famous role may have been Tony in West Side Story (1961) , but he has given good performances both before and since that film in his more than 50-year career. His debut was in Indiscretion of an American Wife (1953) by famed Italian director Vittorio De Sica and he worked steadily, if unspectacularly, up until his big break in West Side Story (1961) . The next year he had a showy role in the WW II epic The Longest Day (1962) which garnered very good reviews. A stint at the Actors Studio in New York was interrupted by his decision to travel to the South as part of the Civil Rights movement's struggle to register black voters in that region, which led to his making an award-winning docume... [Details Intro]