Timothy Hutton | Biography, Movies, TV Shows, & Facts | Britannica (2024)

Timothy Hutton (born August 16, 1960, Malibu, California, U.S.) is an American actor whose subtle portrayal of a young man’s psychological anguish in the film Ordinary People (1980) earned him critical acclaim and an Academy Award for best supporting actor.

Hutton’s parents divorced when he was a small child, and he lived with his mother until his teens, when he reconnected with his father, actor Jim Hutton (whose best-known role was the title character in the 1975–76 television series Ellery Queen). He lived with his father while attending high school in Los Angeles, and acting in a high-school play awakened his desire for a career as an actor.

Hutton’s first credit was in a television movie, Zuma Beach (1978). He won notice for his performance as the younger brother of a man who was killed in the Vietnam War in the TV movie Friendly Fire (1979), and he appeared in several other TV movies before being cast in Ordinary People, his first feature film. His performance as the guilt-ridden son who survived a boating accident in which his elder brother lost his life won him a Golden Globe Award as well as the Oscar. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his lead role in the TV movie A Long Way Home (1981), and he received another Golden Globe nomination for his role as a cadet who leads his classmates in an armed barricade of their military school to prevent its being turned over to developers in the film Taps (1981).

Hutton starred in Sydney Lumet’s Daniel (1983), based on E.L. Doctorow’s 1971 novel The Book of Daniel; played an anthropologist in the science fiction movie Iceman (1984); and costarred with Sean Penn in John Schlesinger’s The Falcon and the Snowman (1985). His turn as a graffiti artist in Turk 182! (1985) was less successful. Hutton appeared in the melodrama A Time of Destiny (1988); the sports drama Everybody’s All-American (1988); Lumet’s police thriller Q & A (1990); George A. Romero’s The Dark Half (1993), based on a Stephen King novel; the TV movie Zelda (1993), in which he played F. Scott Fitzgerald; Ted Demme’s romantic comedy Beautiful Girls (1996); and the thriller Playing God (1997), in which he took the part of the villain. Hutton also appeared in John Sayles’s Sunshine State (2002). His later films included All the Money in the World (2017), Beautiful Boy (2018), and The Glorias (2020).

Hutton continued to appear on television. He starred with Maury Chaykin in the series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2000–02) and was a cast member in the show Kidnapped (2006–07). He starred in Leverage (2008–12), and he received an Emmy Award nomination in 2015 for his work in American Crime (2015–17). Hutton then starred in the sitcom Almost Family (2019), playing a fertility doctor who, as a sperm donor, fathered a number of children. In addition, he had recurring roles in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, The Haunting of Hill House, and How to Get Away with Murder.

In 2020 a Canadian woman publicly accused Hutton of raping her in 1983, when she was 14 years old; she had filed a criminal complaint in 2019. Hutton strenuously denied the allegation.