Stephen Kay

While he started out as an actor and continues to make the occasional big-screen cameo or small-screen appearance, Stephen T. Kay has also established himself as a credible director of films and television series. His first full-length feature, the 1997 Neal Cassady biopic "The Last Time I Committed Suicide" (which he also wrote), was a stylish drama that garnered him critical attention, but his next two theatrical efforts were in entirely different genres. They also received mixed receptions: 2000's "Get Carter," a remake of a cult British crime movie starring Sylvester Stallone, underperformed at the box office, while the '05 horror film "Boogeyman," about a young man who returns home to battle his childhood monster, was a moderate success. In between and around these projects, Kay helmed a number of television features, and during the mid-to-late 2000s he directed episodes of critically acclaimed series, some of them gritty (the crime shows "The Shield" and "Sons of Anarchy"), others warm and inspirational (the drama "Friday Night Lights"). As an actor, he played bit roles and guest-starred in series from the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s. In '95, he landed the role of Peter Rucker, an ordinary guy who has to stop video game villains who have escaped into the human world, in the sci-fi show "Deadly Games." Toward the end of the decade, he appeared on the soap "General Hospital" as the villainous Reginald Jennings.