Tomas Arana

It's very easy for a character actor to get stereotyped, but Tomas Arana enjoyed a varied career in both the United States and Italy. Born Thomas Clifford Arana in Auburn, California, Aran grew up in San Francisco, where he studied classical theater at the American Conservatory and at City College of San Francisco. Like a lot of young people in the 1960s, he took off for Europe, hitchhiking through the regions until he finally settled in Naples, Italy. Arana ended up at the Lucio Amelio Art Gallery where he worked with Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and other acclaimed artists. Warhol also painted his portrait, and it became one of Arana's prized possessions. Arana worked as a producer and lead actor for the acclaimed theater company Falso Movimento in Naples, where he won awards for Best Play of the Year, Best Set Design, and the Mondello Prize. Arana toured around the world for over nine years as a performer at many major stage festivals. Arana made his small screen debut in a TV movie version of "The Taming of the Shrew" (1976) playing a clown. He worked steadily overseas before playing Lazarus in Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" (1988). His next major movie was "The Hunt For Red October" (1991), where he played Loginov. Arana then played one of the best known villain roles of the '90s as the assassin in the Whitney Houston smash "The Bodyguard" (1992), and was part of an impressive ensemble cast in the updated western "Tombstone" (1993). Other prominent big screen appearances included playing Quintus in "Gladiator" (2000) and "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012), where he played Bruce Wayne's (Christian Bale) lawyer. Arana maintained dual American and Italian citizenship, dividing his time between the two countries and working extensively in both American and Italian productions.