An actor who bears an uncanny resemblance to Val Kilmer, Loren Dean is as talented as he is underrated. Largely a supporting player, Dean has twice demonstrated his considerable mettle in films where he has been cast as the title protagonist — first in the gangster drama Billy Bathgate (1991) and then in Mumford (1999), Lawrence Kasdan's tale of a small town's mysterious psychiatrist.

Born in Las Vegas on July 31, 1969, Dean was raised in L.A. by his mother after his parents divorced when he was a small child. He saw his father on the weekends when the two went to the cinema; it was through these weekly outings that Dean developed an interest in film. He also took an early interest in music, something that carried him through a tumultuous adolescence that was marked by a short stint as a runaway in San Francisco when he was 16.

Following his 1986 graduation from high school, Dean moved to New York to pursue a career in acting. Living in relative poverty, he eventually found an agent through a friend of a friend, and he began appearing onstage. The actor made his film debut in 1988 as the brother of an undercover cop in Martha Coolidge's Plain Clothes, and a year later, he played Lili Taylor's notoriously bad ex-boyfriend Joe in Cameron Crowe's celebrated ...Say Anything.…  » Read more