Chris Sarandon

The Face Hollywood Never Knew How to Pigeonhole

Chris Sarandon wasn't seeking fame when he accepted the role of Leon Shermer in 1975. That role as a trans woman in Dog Day Afternoon earned him an Oscar nomination and put him abruptly on the industry's map. Sidney Lumet saw in him a vulnerability the actor himself still struggled to come to terms with.

His roots are in West Virginia, the son of Greek immigrants who ran a restaurant. He studied theater at The Catholic University of America, where he met Susan Tomalin in 1967. She took his last name and, after their divorce in 1979, decided to keep it for her own career. Chris never asked her to give it back.

That film debut alongside Al Pacino could have been a golden trap. But Sarandon preferred to return to the Broadway stage whenever movies offered him flat characters. For him, craft always mattered more than star status.

Theater was his true home.

In 1985, fantasy cinema came knocking with Fright Night. His portrayal of Jerry Dandridge, the seductive and dangerous vampire, broke with the classic Hammer monster mold. He made audiences sympathize with a predator long before Gothic aesthetics became fashionable in the nineties.

From Cruel Prince to Singing Skeleton

Two years later, in 1987, he played Prince Humperdinck in The Princess Bride. It was a complicated shoot where he had to handle a tone of comedy and adventure that few understood at the time. And the gamble paid off.

His ability to seem menacing without raising his voice guaranteed him a steady stream of television work. But his biggest commercial success came without anyone seeing his face. In 1993 he voiced Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas, the Tim Burton production that became a sales phenomenon.

Danny Elfman handled the songs, but Sarandon gave the character a unique vocal melancholy. He still takes part in conventions and re-recordings for video games tied to that universe, because he understands the value of cult status.

Not every actor accepts their past with such ease.

Throughout the nineties and early two-thousands, he focused on recurring characters in series such as Law & Order and ER. In 1994 he married actress Joanna Gleason, and they have since shared the stage on several occasions. His personal life has always stayed far from the Los Angeles tabloids.

Maturity Behind the Microphone

In 2006 he returned to Broadway with The Light in the Piazza and showed that his voice remained intact after decades of heavy use. He had no interest in nostalgia for its own sake. That's why in 2017 he accepted a small role on Orange is the New Black, playing a character that connected with his sensibility from the seventies.

In 2022 he launched his own podcast, Cooking by Heart. In it, he uses cooking as an excuse to interview fellow professionals about their childhood memories and creative processes. It's an intimate format that steers clear of industry promotion.

The industry has changed radically since he started.

In 2023, he took part in the documentary In Search of Darkness: 1990-1994, analyzing the evolution of the horror films he helped shape. He still lives in Connecticut and prefers short shoots that let him come home on weekends. His contract for the Disney video game sequels expires in 2025.