Richard Brake
Although born in South Wales, actor Richard Brake moved with his family to Atlanta, Georgia only a few years after he was born. He attended the Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio, where he played his first role as Judge Danforth in a 1982 production of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible." He graduated in 1983 and proceeded to study acting under Jim Boerlin and Beatrice Straight at the Michael Chekhov Studio in New York, as well as in London at both The Mountview Theatre School and The School for the Science of Acting, where he studied under master teacher Sam Kogan. His first screen role was in the British comedy series "Jeeves and Wooster," starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, in 1993. He played a small role in Anthony Minghella's 2003 Civil War drama "Cold Mountain." In 2005, Brake played a small but significant role as Joe Chill, the petty thief who murders Bruce Wayne's parents, in Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins." The same year, he played a small part in Steven Spielberg's drama "Munich." Brake spent the remainder of the 2000s taking on some rather macabre roles, notably in the Brian De Palma's 2006 thriller "The Black Dahlia," the 2007 Hannibal Lecter prequel "Hannibal Rising," and Rob Zombie's 2009 shocker "Halloween II," the sequel to his 2007 remake of John Carpenter's horror classic.