Bruce Campbell first caught audience’s attention in the early 1980s as the sole surviving character in Sam Raimi’s inventive and blood-soaked debut feature, “The Evil Dead” (1981). But Campbell’s willingness to spoof his own matinee idol looks and B-movie heritage in films like Raimi’s slapstick sequel, “Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn” (1987) and Don Coscarelli’s “Bubba Ho-Tep” (2001) created enough good will that it made him a favorite among cult movie fans and mainstream audiences alike, allowing him to find success on television and Hollywood features, as well as in print.

Born Bruce Lorne Campbell on July 22, 1958 in Royal Oak, MI, Campbell developed an interest in acting at a young age, partly through his father’s own performances in community theater. He befriended future director Sam Raimi while in a high school drama class. The pair indulged in their passion for slapstick humor – The Three Stooges being a particular favorite of the two – and low-budget horror movies in a string of Super-8 films directed by Raimi and starring Campbell and Raimi’s brother Ted (who would go on to play J. Jonah Jameson’s assistant Hoffman in the “Spider-Man” franchise). Campbell attended Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo to study acting, but stayed in touch with Raimi while he attended Michigan State University in East Lansing.

In 1978, Campbell, Raimi and Raimi’s brother Ivan’s college roommate, Robert Tapert (later producer of 2004's “The Grudge” and “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” (syndicated, 1995-99)) partnered to make a 30-minute horror short entitled “Within the Woods.” Through the help of friends, family and local investors, Raimi got the funding to expand the short into a feature film, which was eventually titled “The Evil Dead.” Campbell starred as Ash, the forthright hero of the film, which concerned a group of college friends whose weekend in a remote cabin is interrupted by an assault by diabolical spirits. Over the course of the film’s running time, Ash is forced to not only kill but also disembowel his friends and girlfriend in order to stop the spirits, undergoing considerable agony in his attempts to do so. Due to the rural filming locations and the fact that Raimi and his friends had a hard time getting crew members to stay with the project, Campbell – in addition to his physically demanding role, which frequently called for him to be covered from head to toe in stage blood – worked behind the scenes on the film, earning him a co-executive producer credit.

Completed in 1981, “The Evil Dead” struggled to find a United States distributor, but a small but vocal audience in Europe – along with a rave review from author Stephen King – earned it a stateside distributor with New Line Cinema in 1981, and the picture slowly grew into a worldwide cult hit. However, it would take Campbell and Raimi some time to reap the full benefits of the film’s positive attention.

Campbell co-produced and appeared in a small role in Raimi’s next feature, “Crimewave” (1985), a broad slapstick comedy rife with the director’s signature visual flair, but offscreen conflicts with its producers kept it out of major distribution. Having made little profit from the original release of “Evil Dead,” Raimi and Campbell partnered again to essentially remake the film in the 1987 sequel “Evil Dead 2,” but this time, the pair decided to tone down the first film’s relentless gore; instead going for a broad comic approach. Campbell, in particular, went after the laughs with a vengeance, transforming Ash from a well-meaning hero to a vain, empty-headed dolt who takes a cartoonish beating from the demons but refuses to back down. In one memorable scene, a bite from Ash’s possessed girlfriend causes Campbell’s hand to develop a fiendish life of its own, and the limb unleashes a room-wrecking salvo on him, complete with a full-body flip and numerous plates and other breakables to his head. Critics took note of Campbell’s turn and heaped praise upon his knack for physical comedy, as well as the wry tweak he gave to his own leading man looks. Though the picture fared moderately at the box office, it too became a worldwide cult hit, and Campbell found himself hailed as a new horror movie hero.

For the next couple of years, Campbell toiled exclusively in low-budget and independent genre films, but few of them were able to tap his particular brand of humor – though there were moments for fans to savor in films like William Lustig’s “Maniac Cop” (1988) and the amusing vampire parody “Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat” (1991). Campbell also partnered with Josh Becker, an associate and friend of Sam Raimi’s for two pictures: an ultra-violent slasher film called “Intruder” (1989) and a comic romance of sorts called “Lunatics: A Love Story” (1991), for which he played several supporting roles, including an ersatz Edgar Allan Poe. He could also be seen briefly at the end of Raimi’s ill-fated action picture, “Darkman” (1990), as the new face of Liam Neeson’s character, who could rearrange his appearance thanks to an experimental skin prototype.

In 1993, all of the main “Evil Dead” players reunited for the third film in the series, originally titled “Evil Dead III” but ultimately changed to “Army of Darkness.” Another broad comedy with splattery overtones, the film picked up where “Evil Dead 2” left off – with Ash sucked into a vortex of time and deposited in a medieval setting, where he is forced to once again fight off demons. But this film upped the slapstick even further, most notably in an impressive bit of early CGI in which Ash splits into a good and bad version of himself. As with the previous “Evil Dead” pictures, the film ran afoul of studio interference – co-producers Universal disliked the original downbeat ending and forced Raimi to scramble to complete the picture with limited funds – but the end result once again earned praise around the globe from horror fans.

Following “Army of Darkness,” Campbell’s profile began to rise in the mainstream market. He gave a note-perfect supporting turn as a 1940s-era ace reporter in the Coen Brothers’ “Hudsucker Proxy” (1994) and turned up in small roles in Raimi’s Western “The Quick and the Dead” (1995) and the campy actioner, “Congo” (1995). Larger and recurring parts soon followed on television series like “Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” (ABC, 1993-97) and “Homicide: Life on the Street” (NBC, 1993-99), which offered a rare dramatic turn for Campbell as a vengeful firefighter. Campbell’s own series came in 1993 with “The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.” (Fox, 1993-94), a breezy Western about a Harvard-educated bounty hunter (Campbell) who uses his wits to track down villains. The show lasted just a single season, but as with almost everything Campbell touched during this period, it enjoyed a loyal cult following.

For much of the 1990s, Campbell bounced between cult-minded fare and mainstream material. He was glimpsed briefly as a soap opera actor in the Coen Brothers’ “Fargo” (1996) and gave an amusing turn as the freakishly rebuilt Surgeon General of Beverly Hills in John Carpenter’s “Escape from L.A.” (1997). He was also seen in a small turn as one of Tom Arnold’s sailors in the misconceived big-screen version of “McHale’s Navy” (1997), and turned up on several episodes of “Ellen” (ABC, 1994-98) as Ellen’s competitive nemesis at the bookstore where she worked.

Television seemed the best medium to translate Campbell’s particular brand of old-school heroics and self-deprecating humor. He was charming as the new owner of Herbie, a.k.a “The Love Bug” (1997) in a Disney TV remake, and got a rare shot at a romantic lead as a 19th century adventurer in “Gold Rush: A Real Life Alaskan Adventurer” (1998). His talents were perhaps served best on the “Hercules” series and its spin-off, “Xena: Warrior Princess” (syndicated, 1995-2001), on which he played Autoclytus, the vain, buffoonish “King of Thieves,” indulging in a great deal of slapstick, occasionally opposite “Xena” regular Ted Raimi. Campbell also played his friend and “Hercules” and “Xena” producer Rob Tapert in two episodes of “Hercules” that were set in the modern day.

Campbell returned to series work with “Jack of All Trades” (syndicated, 2000-01), a short-lived period adventure from the “Hercules” and “Xena” producers about a roguish 19th century American spy and his masked alter ego. He also lent his distinctive voice and tongue-in-cheek delivery to numerous animated projects and video games, including a return engagement as Ash in “Evil Dead: Hail to the King” in 2000.

In 2002, Campbell popped up briefly as a smarmy wrestling ring announcer in Raimi’s global smash hit “Spider-Man” – a surprise appearance which never failed to illicit applause from audiences familiar with the longtime relationship between actor and director. He showed up in cameos in both of his friend’s film’s sequels as well; once as an insufferable theater usher in “Spider-Man 2” (2004) and later as an over-eager French maitre’d in “Spider-Man 3” (2007). The same year as his first “Spider-Man” engagement, Campbell penned a terrifically funny autobiography, If Chins Could Kill, which sold well and expanded his audience to an even wider demographic. He began contributing humorous pieces to magazines, including X-Ray, and generally settled into his status as well-loved cult character actor.

His best performance to date came in “Bubba Ho-Tep” (2001), an offbeat comic horror film in which he played an amnesiac resident at a rest home who may (or may not) be Elvis Presley. Together with an elderly black man (Ossie Davis) who believes himself to be John F. Kennedy, he must fight a soul-stealing mummy who preys on the home’s helpless patients. Despite the absurd tone of the project, Campbell gave a performance that touched on both the comic elements and the pathos of a man struggling for respect and recognition in an infirm body. A cult hit almost immediately upon release, “Bubba Ho-Tep” earned Campbell almost universal praise and an award from the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in 2003.

In 2005, Campbell penned his second book, a comic novel – and later, a six-hour audio play – titled Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way, which took a fictional look at his own attempts to break into A-list features. He also took a turn directing with “The Man with the Screaming Brain” (2005), a long-gestating project about a crass American drug company CEO who becomes the unwilling recipient of a deceased KGB spy’s thoughts. A slapstick comedy in the vein of the “Evil Dead” pictures, it played in limited release in theaters and on television on the Sci Fi Channel. Campbell also contributed to a four-part comic book series based on the film.

Campbell continued to travel between big-budget projects and indie fare in the 2000s. He had a serious role in the atmospheric but little-seen supernatural feature “The Woods” (2006), and played a domineering gym coach in Disney’s charming superhero comedy “Sky High” (2005). In 2007, he co-starred as a boozing ex-spy in the USA Network’s clever espionage-themed comedy-drama “Burn Notice” (2007- ) and played up his own chiseled appearance in a series of amusing commercials for Old Spice which obliquely referenced his cult origins (a chainsaw on the mantelpiece of a “Playboy After Dark”-style den). He also directed his second feature, “My Name is Bruce” (2007), a comic horror-adventure in which he played a dissolute version of himself and is recruited by fans to fight a Chinese war god.