Earl Hindman plays Tim Taylor’s eccentric next-door neighbor, Wilson, whose voice of experience and wisdom floats over the backyard fence in response to Tim’s questions about manhood and relationships.
Hindman was born in the mining town of Bisbee, Arizona, where he and his family lived on the edge of the world’s deepest copper mine. As a boy, he would haunt the local movie theater, where you could see two cowboy pictures, a couple of cartoons and a serial, all for a dime.
He started acting in high school and studied drama at the University of Arizona in Tucson before going to New York by way of a brief stop in Los Angeles, which was memorable for Hindman only because he was there when he heard the news of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Since then, most of Hindman’s professional career has been spent on the East Coast. He made his New York debut Off-Broadway in “Dark of the Moon” with Rue McClanahan and Harvey Keitel, which started him on a string of stage performances. After working for a number of years on and Off-Broadway and in regional theater, he landed his breakthrough role in 1971 in David Rabe’s “The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel” at the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Public Theater.
Hindman’s film and television career began to flourish around that time. He landed his first TV role in the late 1960s, in a PBS production of Arthur Miller’s “A Memory of Two Mondays.” He then embarked on what would become ten seasons with the daytime drama “Ryan’s Hope” and has since landed numerous roles in movies and miniseries, including ABC’s “War and Remembrance” and “Stay the Night,” with Jane Alexander and Barbara Hershey. He also had a recurring role on “The Equalizer” and appeared on NBC’s “Deadline,” produced by Dick Wolf.
On film, Hindman was most recently seen in the independent film “Final,” directed by Campbell Scott. His credits also include “The Ballad of the Sad Cafe,” starring Vanessa Redgrave and Keith Carradine, “Talk Radio,” “Three Men and a Baby,” “Silverado,” “Taps,” “The Parallax View,” “The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3” and “Greased Lightning.”
