J. Kenneth Campbell

Acting

J. Kenneth Campbell

Born 1947-07-22 · Flushing, New York, USA

J. Kenneth Campbell's acting career has taken him from Broadway to feature films and television. His many films include Bulworth, Ulee's Gold, Guess Who?, Mars Attacks and The Abyss. He recently completed filming director Kevin Willmott's upcoming feature The Only Good Indian, in which Campbell plays a lead role, alongside Wes Studi (Avatar, Last of the Mohicans). On television, Campbell has appeared in Commander in Chief, Frasier, Charmed, Melrose Place, Ally McBeal, Picket Fences, Matlock, L.A. Law and many other series. Campbell was born in Flushing, New York, in 1947 the second of seven children. He was raised on Long Island and graduated from Cheshire Academy in Connecticut. It was at The University of Arizona where he discovered his calling. Forsaking the "security" of a college degree, he entered "The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater" to study acting with Sanford Miesner. Non-academic acting students in 1967 became automatically eligible for the Selective Service and in the middle of his second year at the Playhouse, Campbell was drafted into the U.S. Army. He retaliated, by joining the Marines. He was wounded in action, and after months of recuperation, he returned to The Playhouse and finished the program. Campbell has worked, on stage, in film and on television ever since.

Acting credits

Mars Attacks! poster
6.4

A fleet of Martian spacecraft surrounds the world's major cities and all of humanity waits to see if the extraterrestrial visitors have, as they claim, "come in peace." U.S. President James Dale receives assurance from science professor Donald Kessler that the Martians' mission is a friendly one. But when a peaceful exchange ends in the total annihilation of the U.S. Congress, military men call for a full-scale nuclear retaliation.

Mars Attacks!

1996

The Abyss poster
7.4

A civilian oil rig crew is recruited to conduct a search and rescue effort when a nuclear submarine mysteriously sinks. One diver soon finds himself on a spectacular odyssey 25,000 feet below the ocean's surface where he confronts a mysterious force that has the power to change the world or destroy it.

The Abyss

1989

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot poster
5.4

A tough police sergeant's mother comes to visit him, and promptly starts trying to fix up his life, much to his embarrassment. For his birthday she buys him a machine gun out of the back of a van, and begins to further interfere with his job and love life, eventually helping him with a case he's on.

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot

1992

Blue Streak poster
6.5

Miles Logan is a jewel thief who just hit the big time by stealing a huge diamond. However, after two years in jail, he comes to find out that he hid the diamond in a police building that was being built at the time of the robbery. In an attempt to regain his diamond, he poses as an LAPD detective.

Blue Streak

1999

Collateral Damage poster
5.8

Firefighter Gordon Brewer is plunged into the complex and dangerous world of international terrorism after he loses his wife and child in a bombing credited to Claudio 'The Wolf' Perrini.

Collateral Damage

2002

Guess Who poster
6.0

When a young African-American woman brings her fiancé home to meet her parents, she's neglected to mention one tiny detail – he's white.

Guess Who

2005

Turbulence poster
5.4

On a flight transporting dangerous convicts, murderer Ryan Weaver manages to break free and cause complete chaos throughout the plane. As various people on board fall victim to Weaver, it is ultimately down to flight attendant Teri Halloran to keep the aircraft from crashing, with on-ground support from an air traffic controller. While Halloran struggles to pilot the plane, Weaver continues to terrorize the surviving members of the crew.

Turbulence

1997

The Changeling poster
7.0

After a tragic event happens, composer John Russell moves to Seattle to try to overcome it and build a new and peaceful life in a lonely big house that has been uninhabited for many years. But, soon after, the obscure history of such an old mansion and his own past begin to haunt him.

The Changeling

1980

Love and Bullets poster
5.8

Jackie Pruit is the girlfriend of notorious gangster Joe Bomposa. When it looks as if Bomposa's goons are threatening Jackie's life, the FBI moves in to protect her, hoping that she'll have incriminating evidence. Veteran agent Charlie Congers is assigned to watch over Jackie, and while it soon becomes apparent that she knows almost nothing about Bomposa that would be of any use to the FBI, he falls in love with her. Bomposa decides it would be more convenient to have Jackie out of the way, ordering her to be executed. Bomposa's henchmen slip through FBI security and murder her, but now they have to answer the angry and vengeful Congers.

Love and Bullets

1979

An Innocent Man poster
6.2

Jimmie Rainwood was minding his own business when two corrupt police officers (getting an address wrong) burst into his house, expecting to find a major drug dealer. Rainwood is shot, and the officers frame him as a drug dealer. Rainwood is convicted of drug dealing, based on the perjured evidence of a police informant. Thrown into a seedy jail, fighting to prove his innocence is diffucult when he has to deal with the realities of prison life, where everyone claims they were framed.

An Innocent Man

1989

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam poster
7.1

Real-life letters written by American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines during the Vietnam War to their families and friends back home. Archive footage of the war and news coverage thereof augment the first-person "narrative" by men and women who were in the war, some of whom did not survive it.

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam

1987

Tomcats poster
5.1

College buddies chip in and promise that the group's last unmarried man will collect a cash pot. Seven years later, the kitty is worth $500,000 -- money Michael needs to pay a gambling debt. Problem is, the only other single guy is a hopeless womanizer!

Tomcats

2001

Bulworth poster
6.3

A suicidally disillusioned liberal politician puts a contract out on himself and takes the opportunity to be bluntly honest with his voters by affecting the rhythms and speech of hip-hop music and culture.

Bulworth

1998

Flight of the Intruder poster
5.8

U.S. Navy pilot Lt. Jake Grafton and his bombardier buddy, Lt. Cmdr. Virgil Cole, are two soldiers embedded in the Vietnam War growing frustrated by the military's constraints on their missions. Despite the best efforts of their commanding officer, Cmdr. Frank Camparelli, to re-engage them, this disillusioned pair decide to take the war effort into their own hands with an explosive battle plan that could well get them court-martialed.

Flight of the Intruder

1991

Waxwork poster
6.2

Wealthy slacker Mark, his new girlfriend Sarah, and their friends, are invited to a special showing at a mysterious wax museum which displays eighteen of the most evil men of all time. After his ex-girlfriend and another friend disappear, Mark becomes suspicious…

Waxwork

1988

Cobb poster
5.7

Al Stump is a famous sports-writer chosen by Ty Cobb to co-write his official, authorized 'autobiography' before his death. Cobb, widely feared and despised, feels misunderstood and wants to set the record straight about 'the greatest ball-player ever,' in his words.

Cobb

1994

Deadfall poster
4.1

After he accidentally kills his father Mike during a sting, Joe tries to carry out Mike's dying wish by recovering valuables that Mike's twin brother Lou stole from him years earlier. But Uncle Lou is also a confidence artist, and Joe is soon drawn into his increasingly dangerous schemes.

Deadfall

1993

The Great Los Angeles Earthquake poster
6.7

After a series of small tremors in Los Angeles, Dr. Clare Winslow, a local seismologist, pinpoints the exact location and time of when the long awaited earthquake--"The Big One"--will strike southern California. With this information, she must battle city officials to release this information to the general public. Also, she hopes that her family is out of harms way when the quake strikes. Subplots show how other families and people cope with the the tremors that strike before the impending "Big One."

The Great Los Angeles Earthquake

1990

The Last of the Finest poster
5.9

An elite group of vice cops are fired from the L.A.P.D. for being over-zealous in their war against drugs. It is immediately apparent that some of their superiors are involved in the drug ring. Banded together, four of the banned cops (which quickly becomes three when one is killed early) band together to fight the drug ring undercover. They gain capital for weapons by ripping off minor drug dealers. Then well-armed they go after the kingpin (Boyd).

The Last of the Finest

1990

Ulee's Gold poster
6.5

Third-generation Florida beekeeper Ulee Jackson may have gotten out of Vietnam alive, but he left a part of himself behind. Now he methodically tends his bees, carefully provides for his two grandchildren and keeps his emotions at bay. But when a long-buried secret threatens Ulee's business and family, he is forced to break through his emotional walls and confront the terror of his wounded spirit.

Ulee's Gold

1997

Murder 101 poster
5.0

Charles Lattimore, an author of a book about a famous murder trial, arranges to meet with one of his students one night. When the student is found murdered and Lattimore has no alibi, he suspects he is being framed by the subject of his book.

Murder 101

1991

Perry Mason: The Case of the Shooting Star poster
7.2

An actor rigs a fake shooting on TV with the connivance of his friend, the show's host, but the practical joke goes wrong when the gun turns out to contain a live round.

Perry Mason: The Case of the Shooting Star

1986

Interceptor poster
5.9

A U.S. Air Force officer tries to stop a murderous group of terrorists who are trying to steal two top secret F-117A Stealth Fighters from the cargo hold of a gigantic C-5 Galaxy Transport flying at 30,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean.

Interceptor

1992

Johnny Ryan poster
NR

An honest, hard-working cop has to go up against the mob in 1949 New York City.

Johnny Ryan

1990