Ronald N. Perlman[1] was born on April 13, 1950, in Washington Heights, New York City.[2] His mother, Dorothy (née Rosen), was a municipal employee, and his father, Bertram "Bert" Perlman, was a jazz drummer and television repairman.[3] His family is Jewish, originally from Hungary and Poland, and Perlman had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony.[4][5]
Perlman said in 1988, "It was not a bad childhood but I had a perception of myself that was... I was terribly overweight as a young kid, and it was sort of a low self image."[6] He stated this experience is something that attracts him to roles where he portrays "these sorts of deformed people who are very endearing."[7][8] Perlman had a "very close" relationship with his father, who convinced his son he "had to" pursue a career as an actor after seeing him perform in a college production of Guys and Dolls.[7]
Perlman started his career as a stage actor in 1975 and made his television debut in Ryan's Hope in 1979. He made his feature film debut in Jean-Jacques Annaud's film Quest for Fire (1981). Annaud later revealed that when he contacted Perlman to ask him about playing Salvatore in The Name of the Rose (1986), Perlman was thinking of abandoning his career. After various minor and supporting roles in film and television, he got his breakthrough leading role as Vincent on the television series Beauty and the Beast, opposite Linda Hamilton, from 1987 to 1990. This earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series in 1989.[10]
He played his first leading film role in 1995, when he played "One" in Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's French-language The City of Lost Children. In 2003, Perlman starred in a commercial for Stella Artois beer. This commercial, which was called "Devil's Island",[12] won a Silver Award at the 2003 British Advertising Awards.[13][14] He got another leading film role in 2004 when he played the title role in the comic book adaptation Hellboy. Perlman reprised his role as Hellboy in the straight to DVD animated features Hellboy: Sword of Storms (2006) and Hellboy: Blood and Iron (2007) as well as Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008).
In 2008, Perlman joined the cast of the television series Sons of Anarchy on FX playing Clay Morrow, the national president of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club. He also played Wes Chandler in the second and third seasons of StartUp in 2017–18.
Perlman has also provided narration for a number of audiobooks, including City of Thieves by David Benioff. Perlman also does narration in the UFC's cold open promos for pay-per-view events.[19]
Personal life
Perlman married Opal Stone, an Afro-Jamaican jewelry designer, on Valentine's Day 1981 and they had two children together: daughter Blake Amanda (b. 1984) and son Brandon Avery (b. 1990).[20] They separated in May 2019 and Perlman later filed for divorce.[21] In 2022, Perlman married his StartUp co-star Allison Dunbar in Italy after three years of dating.[22] His son Brandon produces electronic music under the stage name Delroy Edwards.[23]
In 2018, Perlman claimed that he intentionally urinated on his hand prior to shaking Harvey Weinstein's hand followed by the message "I think about that every time lil Donnie opens up his KFC."[26]