Reid Scott

Reid Scott was born in Albany, NY, the son of an art teacher and an attorney. Growing up in nearby Clifton Park, Scott gravitated to the stage early, joining a school drama club in the sixth grade. He continued to pursue the art, even at the all-boys secondary school LaSalle Military Academy in Oakdale, NY, where he performed his first Shakespearean productions. By the time he matriculated at Syracuse University, he had hoped to pursue a path toward becoming a film director, but after taking several acting courses, he instead found himself drawn back to the role of performer. He moved to New York City after graduation and inched into the professional dramatic world, winning roles in commercials and in off-Broadway productions, as well as a short but important role as a scheming lothario on the long-running soap, "All My Children" (ABC, 1970-2011). He next landed the lead role in a prospective sitcom "With You in Spirit" and moved to Los Angeles to shoot the pilot. After Fox declined to pick up the show, Scott managed to pick up some guest appearances on sitcoms such as "That '70s Show" (Fox, 1998-2006) and "What I Like About You" (The WB, 2002-06). He vaulted from guest-starring to a cast role in 2003 when he won the central part in the ensemble ABC comedy "It's All Relative," a late entry in the wave of network attempts to assimilate gay culture into sitcoms."It's All Relative" featured Scott as Bobby, a blue-collar Bostonite whose own mismatched pairing with an erudite college girl (Maggie Lawson) was amplified by their respective oil-and-water sets of parents; his being homophobic, hers being a professional same-sex couple who had adopted her. The show's single-season tracked the couple's courtship through an eventual union, with all the incumbent intolerance of the two families acclimatizing to each other, but its de rigueur culture-clash theme less than impressed critics and its ratings could not sustain a second season. Undaunted, he landed a recurring role on the NBC saga "American Dreams" (2002-05) and in the interim scored the occasional one-off project, including the TV film "Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman" (2004), a guest turn on "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (CBS, 2000-15), and the teen comedy "Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas" (2006). In 2006, Scott returned to the sitcom genre in a much-touted TBS original production, "My Boys," starring as a member of the poker-playing, sports-talking retinue around perennial tomboy and Chicago sportswriter P.J. (Jordana Spiro). As Brendo, the effortlessly cool girl-magnet of the bunch and P.J.'s roommate, Scott clicked with a talented ensemble whose clever, breezy banter earned nearly uniformly positive reviews, with critics often drawing comparisons to HBO's "Sex and the City" (1998-2004). The response drew more orders from TBS, and Scott, meanwhile, earned additional work in a string of TV guest appearances on such shows as "Bones" (Fox, 2005-), "CSI: NY" (CBS, 2004-), "Unhitched" (Fox, 2008) and "Hawthorne" (TBS, 2009-11), along with some offbeat one-off projects such as the low-rent slasher film "Amusement" (2008) and the web series "My Two Fans" (2009) and "Celebrities Anonymous" (2009). In 2009, he also supplemented his "My Boys" gig with a recurring role on two seasons of ABC Family's teen drama, "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" (2008-13), in which he played a young gynecologist involved with one of the teenagers' mothers. TBS pulled the plug on "My Boys" after its 2010 season, by which time Scott had landed a plum role on the latest in HBO's long line of premium, typically edgy original programs, "The Big C" - a show that put a brave comedic spin on a deadly subject. Starring Laura Linney as a wife and mother coping with a diagnosis of late-stage cancer, Scott playing her inexperienced and socially awkward doctor amid an estimable cast that includes Oliver Platt, Idris Elba and Scott's former "It's All Relative" co-star, John Benjamin Hickey. Much to Scott's pleasure, the show's East Coast shooting afforded Scott the opportunity to move back to New York.