Creed Bratton

Who exactly was Creed Bratton? Fans of the American version of the British TV sitcom "The Office" (NBC, 2005-13) knew him as the actor who played a character named "Creed Bratton" - the creepy, enigmatic Quality Assurance rep who caught fish with his bare hands and claimed to have only four toes on his right foot. Fans of the 1960's folk rock group The Grass Roots also knew him as Creed Bratton, the lead guitarist who caught sharks from his Seattle hotel room and raced the band's tour bus while in the nude. His mother first knew him as William Charles Schneider, her musically gifted son whose name she changed to Chuck Ertmoed after she remarried; then she knew him as Creed Bratton after "Chuck" changed his name while traveling the world and playing guitar in his early twenties. Creed Bratton was, in fact, all these incarnations, and he crafted a unique identity in popular culture that was as slippery as those aforementioned fish and sharks he (and his like-named TV persona) used to catch.