Bruce Campbell: Biography

A self-described B-movie actor, Bruce Campbell can claim to have scaled the casualty-littered mountain of cult movie stardom. First attaining more notoriety than fame for his performance in Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1983), which he also executive produced, Campbell went on to star in that movie's two sequels and a number of other schlock-tastic films. He has also occasionally ventured into more reputable territory, thanks to such films as the Coen brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy (1994).

Hailing from Royal Oak, MI, where he was born June 22, 1958, Campbell attended Western Michigan University. When he was only 21, he and two of his Detroit friends, Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, scraped together 350,000 dollars to make a low-budget horror film. The result, completed piecemeal over four years, was The Evil Dead, an exuberantly awful piece of filmmaking that featured Campbell as its demon-battling hero. The film first earned notoriety in England, and after being personally endorsed by author Stephen King when it was screened at Cannes, it was eventually released in the U.S. in 1983.

The Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn followed in 1987, and the third installment in the series, Army of Darkness, was released in 1992. Both were enthusiastically embraced by fans of the series and less so by critics, but one thing that impressed both groups was Campbell's work in both films, thanks in part to his uncanny ability to make it through an entire performance without blinking once.

In addition to the Evil Dead films, Campbell has acted in a number of other low-budget films, and, in the case of the Coens' The Hudsucker Proxy and a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in Fargo (1996), a handful of fairly respectable projects as well. He has also acted frequently on television, most notably in the weekly Western The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and Jack of all Trades. In 2001 Campbell made his literary debut with If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor. A humorously detailed account of his rise to B-movie stardom, If Chins Could Kill detailed, among other things, Campbell's uniquely diverse fanbase as well as his relationship with longtime friend and frequent collaborator Sam Raimi. ~ Rebecca Flint, All Movie Guide