Brendan Kelly

Brendan Kelly is an actor whose burly, six-foot, three-inch frame has earned him numerous tough-guy roles as everything from a guard in Spike Lee's epic biopic "Malcolm X" in 1992, to Hillary Duff's bodyguard in "The Lizzie McGuire Movie" in 2003. Born in Dublin, Ireland, Kelly had his first film part in 1988, and by 1993 had ascended to one of the biggest roles of his career as former C.I.A. agent Mike Savage, the co-star of the syndicated action series "Acapulco H.E.A.T.," on which he appeared for all 22 episodes. In 1995 Kelly was again tapped by Lee, this time for a role in "Clockers," Lee's crime drama about Brooklyn drug pushers. Kelly's Irish ethnicity, intimidating size, and shaved head and beard made him rich typecasting for Aryan thugs, specifically in the blockbuster 1997 action thriller "Con Air," and then again as murder convict Wolfgang Cutler, a recurring character on the hit HBO series "Oz" in 2002 and 2003. After several brief appearances in a series of crime dramas throughout the 2000s, including "NYPD Blue" and "CSI: NY," in 2010 the father of four earned a lead in the ensemble drama "Look," a single-season series that examined urban life through the omnipresence of surveillance cameras.