One of the few American actors whose stage experience equals that of their film work, William H. Macy (sometimes credited as W.H. Macy) struggled for years to make others realize what mentor David Mamet knew from the very beginning, that here was an astonishing "cleanup hitter" (Macy's description for a character actor). Early on, his boyish handsomeness led to typecasting as the callow youth ("dead or weeping by the end of the play") or the boy genius with the solution to the play's central conflict. When he first moved to Los Angeles in the late 1980s to pursue a film career, he was mostly the villain, the child molester, the sleazy lawyer, the good cop gone bad. He went broke twice along the way, and the frustration seeped into his hangdog persona, played out on his melancholy features as he humanized despairing, imperfect people. His square-faced, weathered innocence finally landed Macy his breakthrough role as the smarmy car salesman who arranges the kidnapping of his wife in the Coen brothers' quirky "Fargo" (1996), and suddenly the lovable loser was an Oscar nominee and a recognizable face, firmly ensconced on the Hollywood A-list.

Though he entered college with every intention of studying veterinary medicine, Macy transferred to Goddard College and met Mamet (the man he calls his "godfather"), a recent Goddard grad who had returned to teach acting at his alma mater. The student responded to his instructor's call for hard work (the very antithesis of the liberal laxity of that "hippie" institution), and when Mamet returned to his native Chicago, he took Macy and fellow "Mamet Mafia" member Steven Schachter with him. The trio founded the St Nicholas Theater, and in 1975 staged Mamet's "American Buffalo" with Macy playing Bobby, the youth who serves as a kind of witless apprentice to two hapless thieves. Acknowledging his debt to Mamet, he told The Guardian (January 27, 2000): "He wasn't just my mentor, he also gave me my career. He gave me crucial roles throughout my career. I just wouldn't have made it without him." For the rest of the 70s, the actor continued to hone his craft on stage until he began to land small roles in TV (the 1978 NBC miniseries "The Awakening Land") and films ("Foolin' Around" 1979; "Somewhere in Time" 1980).

Macy settled in NYC and found success in off-Broadway shows, including a Mamet-directed "Twelfth Night" (1980-81) and A R Gurney's "The Dining Room" (1982), and he and Mamet also co-founded the Atlantic Theatre Company, where Macy has both acted and directed. By the time the actor finally reached Broadway portraying Howie Newsome in the 1988 all-star revival of "Our Town,” Mamet had already used him in small roles for his "House of Games" (1987, Mamet's feature directing debut) and "Things Change" (1988) and would soon promote him to a major part as a doomed police detective in "Homicide" (1991). After starring onstage as a college professor accused of sexual harassment by a female student in Mamet's "Oleanna" (1992), he reprised the role in Mamet's static 1994 film version opposite Rebecca Pidgeon (the director's second wife), the only time he has played a film lead to date. Despite fine turns as the uptight vice principal in "Mr. Holland's Opus" (1995) and a recurring role as the forever put-upon hospital chief of staff on NBC's "ER" (from its 1994 pilot to his bare-bottomed exit in the series live premiere episode in 1998), Macy did not hit his stride until "Fargo". The career surge that followed his battle of wits with Frances McDormand's pregnant police chief more than justified his threats to kill the Coens' dogs if they didn't give him the role.

Macy may see "Howdy Doody" when he looks in the mirror, but since 'Fargo" the ubiquitous actor has become in his own words "a big fat star,” playing frightened, fumbling men on the brink, fighting to maintain a grip as events overwhelm them. "I'm completely hooked into the imploding WASP role," he informed the Los Angeles Times (December 20, 1998). "Even in the New York stage I did that a lot. I think there's a great part of me that's actually an imploding WASP." Macy made his action-adventure debut I 1997 as a gun-toting presidential adviser supporting Harrison Ford in "Air Force One" but also saw him deliver a touching performance as the cuckolded assistant director to a pornographic filmmaker in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie Nights" (both 1997), not to mention his small role in "Wag the Dog" (co-scripted by Mamet). The following year he gave a poignant portrayal as the repressed TV father in "Pleasantville,” stuck in a black-and-white world while everyone around him was blossoming in color, and was equally splendid in "A Civil Action" as the harried legal accountant, whose thankless job it was to go to the bankers and keep asking for more money while John Travolta's obsession with one case threatened to bankrupt the practice. He rounded out the year by stepping into Martin Balsam's shoes as private dick Milton Arbogast in Gus Van Sant's unnecessary shot-for-shot color remake of Hitchcock's classic "Psycho.”

Macy was his usual droll self as the unlikely superhero The Shoveler in "Mystery Men,” a sharply-written comedy compromised by its length, and was even better reuniting with Paul Thomas Anderson for "Magnolia" (both 1999), portraying damaged former "Quiz Kid" Donnie Smith, reduced to a routine job in an electronics store and hoping that some pricey dental work will revive his love life. Despite his ability to attract the big bucks in mainstream projects, he still made time for independents like "Happy, Texas" (1999, as a gay sheriff) and the romantic drama "Panic,” which debuted at Sundance in 2000. Macy co-wrote one of his best parts of 1999, that of a movie critic who turns out to be a philandering, larcenous murderer in TNT's "A Slight Case of Murder". His fourth TV-movie scripted with "Mamet Mafia" mate Schachter cast him opposite wife Felicity Huffman, and he got to spend even more time with the missus by taking a recurring role as a ratings expert on her ABC series "Sports Night" during the 1999-2000 season. He was back with Mamet for "State and Main" (2000), playing a libidinous Hollywood director on location in Vermont. He also acted that year in a London revival of "American Buffalo,” this time taking the larger, and older role of Teach.

In 2002, Macy starred as Riley in a Sundance All-Star lineup that included Patricia Clarkson, Sam Rockwell and Luis Guzman in the light-hearted caper comedy "Welcome to Collinwood," directed by the Russo brothers. The actor added a welcome dose of comic verse to the reverent historical film "Seabiscuit" (2003), the true-life story of the Depression Era racehorse-turned-folk hero, as the fast-talking, rumor-spreading sports announcer "Tick-Tock" McLaughlin. Along with his successes in film, the actor also scored on television for his portrayal of Bill Porter, a man afflicted with cerebral palsy who is determined to become a door-to-door salesman in the TNT biopic "Door to Door" (2002), which Macy also co-wrote with Schachter, who directed the film. In 2003 Macy took home two Emmy awards for his work on the project as both lead actor and co-screenwriter, and as a nice bookend for the year turned in his ultimate "loser" performance in the off-beat film "The Cooler," playing Bernie Lootz, a man so overwhelmingly unlucky he's employed by a Las Vegas casino to spread his infectious misfortune on winning gamblers until his luck changes after he begins a torrid affair with a gorgeous cocktail waitress (Maria Bello), threatening his status at the casino.

Returning to television, Macy starred opposite David Arquette in the Showtime telepic "Stealing Sinatra" (2003) as the not-so-clever culprits who held Frank Sinatra's son for ransom in a real-life kidnapping case from the 1960s, then he reunited professionally with Huffman on the Showtime miniseries "Out of Order" (2003) about the personal lives of married Hollywood screenwriters, and joined his wife and Tom Selleck for the 2004 CBS miniseries "Reversible Errors," a legal potboiler based on the Scott Turow novel. In 2004, Macy rejoined David Mamet for the writer-director's edgy political thriller "Spartan" in what at first appeared to be a subdued, walk-on role and almost walks away with the entire film. The actor was again at the top of his game in the equally gimmicky and inspired thriller "Cellular" (2004) spinning his world-weary persona into a seemingly routine, by-the-books veteran police officer who dreams of opening a day spa upon retirement, only to prove that the old dog does have a few new tricks in him when he's drawn into a bizarre kidnapping case.

After penning and starring as the mute superintendent of a ramshackle apartment building who becomes the unwilling guardian of a little girl with an attitude in the telepic "The Wool Cap" (TNT, 2004), directed by Schacter from a story originally by Jackie Gleason, he then played Dirk Pitt associate Admiral James Sandecker in the adventure "Sahara" (2005), the Paramount Pictures adaptation of the bestselling Clive Custler novel. Macy once again reunited with old friend David Mamet for a film version of the playwright’s 1982 play “Edmund” (2005), playing the title character, a bland businessman slouching through a boring job and drab marriage when he encounters a mysterious fortune teller who sends him on a horrifying, but darkly funny descent into a modern urban hell. In “Thank You for Smoking” (2006), Macy was a Vermont senator trying to take down a tobacco lobbyist whose gift for spin makes him a comfortable living defending the rights of smokers and cigarette makers against an über-puritanical culture.

After voicing characters in the animated features “Doogal” (2006) and “Everyone’s Hero” (2006), Macy joined an all-star cast for the docudrama “Bobby” (2006), first time director Emilio Estevez’s engaging look at the 16 hours prior to Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as seen through the eyes of several guests and employees. Macy joined the ensemble cast of “Wild Hogs” (2007), a big, dumb and hugely successful comedy about four down-and-out men (Macy, John Travolta, Tim Allen and Martin Lawrence) going through respective mid-life crises who embark on a freewheeling, cross-country motorcycle trip in order to prove their manhood. Despite scores of bad reviews, many of which complained about the bizarre, almost obsessive need for the four leads to constantly prove their heterosexuality onscreen, “Wild Hogs” dominated the box office its opening weekend, taking in almost $40 million and making it the first bona fide hit of 2007. Back on the small screen, Macy earned an Emmy award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie for “Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King” (TNT, 2005-06), an anthology series based on a trio of stories penned by the master of horror himself.