Douglas Kidd

About Douglas Kidd

Actor Douglas Kidd was born Douglas James Miller in Vancouver, Canada. Weighing in at close to 10 pounds, he was the biggest baby in the Vancouver General Hospital at the time of his birth. He has Austrian, Irish, Scottish, Finnish and Norwegian ancestry. He is mostly known for playing tough and/or wealthy men.An all-around athlete growing up, Kidd excelled at football, wrestling, track & field, soccer and ice hockey. In his final year at Windsor Secondary School in North Vancouver he was named "Athlete of the Year", won a silver medal at the British Columbia High School Wrestling Championships, and played the title role in a production of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth".Kidd was awarded a wrestling scholarship at Simon Fraser University, and competed at tournaments in Canada and the USA during his first two years. Then, while completing a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature, Kidd attended a production of Peter Schaffer's play "Amadeus" at the Vancouver Playhouse as a course requirement. Passing through the lobby just a few minutes before the curtain went up, Kidd was surprised to run into Hollywood actor Charles Martin Smith (The Untouchables, American Graffiti), and the play inspired Kidd to audition for SFU's Theatre Program. He performed a monologue from "Amadeus" as one of his audition pieces, and was invited directly into the second year of the University's three-year program.Kidd's early interest in acting owed much to Sylvester Stallone's performance in Rocky (1976), so when he heard they needed Vancouver locals to play Russian boxing fans for Rocky IV (1985) Kidd attended every day of the two-week shoot to try to get in the film. On one day, a small group of men had been selected to stand around Rocky during his victory speech. The men had to remove their shoes so as to not damage the boxing ring's canvas and those with white socks were being dismissed because, they reasoned, only those with dark socks would still look like they were wearing shoes. When Kidd overheard that, he asked one of the film's crew to lend him a roll of black tape and wound it around his own white socks. He slipped into the ring, passed inspection, and is standing screen-left of Rocky during his speech at the end of the movie, Kidd's first appearance in film.After graduating from SFU's Theatre Program, Kidd spent a year in Montreal and performed in a few plays there, including a production of Ronald Harwood's "The Dresser" for Imago Theatre. He then moved to Toronto and was cast in many other plays, chief among which was an outdoor production of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" by Director Lewis Baumander (who directed Keanu Reeves in Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet), and a production of Agatha Christie's play "The Mousetrap" at the Toronto Truck Theatre (billed as "Canada's Longest Running Show") in which Kidd gave over 400 performances. Kidd also played the title role in "Colonel Quackery's Truly Fabulous Leisure Travelling Sideshow", in which he sang and danced at hundreds of schools all over Ontario, educating thousands of kids on how to make the most of their leisure time. In order to join that touring show, Kidd gave up his role as lead singer for a rock band he had auditioned for called The Fringe, but not before he got to perform with the band at a couple of Toronto nightclubs, including the El Mocambo where The Rolling Stones had once recorded a live album.Kidd also began to get cast in movies, playing the lead role in two low-budget feature films: t...

Movies Appeared in

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Jackie Coogan on THE KID

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