Grant Bowler

After decades of work on television in New Zealand and his native Australia, Grant Bowler came to Hollywood where he launched a slow-burning but consistent career. American audiences first came to know Bowler as the authoritarian Captain Gault on the hit series "Lost" (ABC, 2004-10), but he was perhaps best known as Connor Owens, the corrupt CFO and love interest of Vanessa Williams' villainous Wilhelmina Slater on "Ugly Betty" (ABC, 2006-10). Splitting his time between the United States and Australia, Bowler continued to entertain antipodean audiences as the host of "The Amazing Race Australia" (ABC, 2011-12), but it would be his work as the biker/werewolf Cooter on "True Blood" (HBO, 2008-14) that would keep him at the forefront of American television. Having built a following on "True Blood," in 2012, Bowler stepped into a lead role, playing the late Richard Burton opposite Lindsay Lohan's Elizabeth Taylor in the notorious television biopic, "Liz & Dick" (Lifetime, 2012). His early decades as a hardworking, sometimes struggling actor proved Grant Bowler to be a resilient, grounded talent whose strength and tenacity ran deeper than his matinee idol looks.