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Mr. Vaughn has appeared in over 100 motion pictures and was honored with the inclusion of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1998.
Introduced in 1956 by Columbia Studios in the film NO TIME TO BE YOUNG, Vaughn went on to receive an Academy Award nomination in Newman in THE YOUNG PHILADELPHIANS. Subsequently, he received a British Oscar nomination for his performance with Steve McQueen in BULLITT. Other feature film credits include THE MAGNIFICENT 7, TOWERING INFERNO, SUPERMAN III and S.O.B., and most recently WARRIOR CLASS and HAPPY HOUR opposite Anthony LaPaglia.
For his portrayal as a presidential henchman in WASHINGTON: BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, Vaughn was awarded an Emmy. He starred for four years as ‘Napoleon Solo’ in THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., which received the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globe as the most popular television show in the world. During this time, Vaughn was the recipient of the Photoplay Gold Medal Award as the most popular actor in America, an award presented to him on the Merv Griffin Show by the previous year’s winner, John Wayne.
He received a second Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Woodrow Wilson in the miniseries BACKSTAIRS AT THE WHITEHOUSE. Vaughn has portrayed four other Presidents: Richard Nixon, Harry Truman, Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the one man stage show, FDR, written by Dore Schary and filmed for HBO.
In 2008 Mr. Vaughn starred in the ABC/20TH Century Fox Comedy Pilot – FAMILY OF THE YEAR with Jennifer Coolidge and Alan Ruck and the Lifetime Television Pilot HINDSIGHT .
Vaughn’s other television work includes 5 Seasons on the BBC/AMC Original Series HUSTLE, the miniseries INSIDE THE THIRD REICH, THE BLUE AND THE GREY, CENTENNIAL, EVERGREEN, CAPTAINS AND KINGS, THE LAST BASTION, in which he played General Douglas MacArthur, SILENT REACH and Disney’s TRACKS OF GLORY.
He is a third generation actor. His mother, Marcella Gaudel, starred on Broadway in the original Dracula with Bela Lugosi. His father, Walter Vaughn, was one of radio’s most successful actors in its Golden Age.
Vaughn began his stage career at the age of twelve in the “Famous Players” tent shows in Iowa. He went on to become the resident director and leading man at the Albuquerque and Santa Fe Summerhouse Theaters’ in New Mexico, the Tustin Playbox in California and the Los Angeles Stage Society amassing over 100 theatrical productions. He has played Hamlet three times, and was judged by the Los Angeles critics as “an actor who can be favorably compared with the Royal Shakespeare’s John Neville in a role that is the ultimate goal of all post-Elizabethian thespians.”
Theatre credits include: TRUMBO (The Cleveland Playhouse), QUARTET (The Berkshire Featival) and EXONERATED (Off-broadway/National Tour) directed by Bob Balaban. At the Papermill Playhouse, Vaughn played Henry Drummond with E.G. Marshall in INHERIT THE WIND, a production that won the Showtime Award as the best play done outside New York in North America. On Broadway he performed in LOVE LETTERS opposite Polly Bergen.
He is a former chairman of Voter Registration and the Speaker’s Bureau for the Democratic Party in California and a past member of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. On January 29, 1966, in Indianapolis, before an FDR-JFK fund raising dinner, Vaughn became first member of his profession to publicly oppose United States military involvement in Vietnam. For the balance of that decade, he gave hundreds of speeches defending that position. He debated members of the Johnson administration on the war including Vice-president Hubert Humphrey and republican doyen, William F. Buckley, on his show FIRING LINE. Also, in 1966, he was chosen as one the Outstanding Young Men in America. For ITV London he covered the 1970 British election with David Frost and was a floor reporter for ABC radio at the 1972 Democratic convention in Miami. His long running Sunday show on KABC in Los Angeles was subsequently broadcast from London where he resided for 3 years while doing the British television series THE PROTECTORS.
Vaughn received his Ph.D from the University of Southern California and his book, ONLY VICTIMS, a study of show business blacklisting, is considered one of the definitive works in the field. His most recent writing effort, “Christ, Hamlet, Ho Chi Min: As I Knew Them” will be published in the near future.
He is married to Linda Gene Vaughn and is the father of Cassidy and Caitlin.
