Tom Atkins (actor)
American actor
Tom Atkins (born November 13, 1935) is an American actor. He is known for his work in the horror and thriller film genres, having worked with writers and directors such as Shane Black, William Peter Blatty, John Carpenter, Fred Dekker, Richard Donner, Stephen King, and George A. Romero. He is also a familiar face to mainstream viewers, often playing police officers and tough authority figures and is perhaps best known for his role as Lt. Alex Diehl in The Rockford Files (1974–1977).
Atkins has appeared in numerous films including The Fog (1980), The Ninth Configuration (1980), Escape from New York (1981), Creepshow (1982), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), Night of the Creeps (1986), Lethal Weapon (1987), Maniac Cop (1988), Two Evil Eyes (1990), Bob Roberts (1992), Striking Distance (1993), My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009), Drive Angry (2011), Encounter (2018), and Trick (2019).
Atkins has also appeared in numerous television series and films such as Hawaii Five-O (1975), Kojak: Flowers for Matty (1990), Walker, Texas Ranger (1993), Fortune Hunter (1994), Xena: Warrior Princess (1996), Homicide: Life on the Street (1998), Oz (2003), Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2003), The Jury (2004), The Last-Drive In with Joe Bob Briggs (2019), City on a Hill (2022), and Creepshow (2023).
Early life
Atkins initially had no desire to be an actor. His father worked in a steel mill in Pennsylvania and Atkins assumed that he would follow in his father's footsteps. He enlisted in the United States Navy and "noticed that the officers lived great, but that was only because they had gone to college,"
and so, after leaving the Navy, Atkins enrolled in college where he met a girl who was involved in a theatre group. Atkins studied at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and was a member of the Gamma Phi fraternity.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Tom Atkins (actor)” as american actor. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american actor. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1366623. VIAF identifies the subject as 71594565. The Library of Congress control number is no2001076414. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935, 1974, 1977 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tom Atkins (actor)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.