Parker Stevenson biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Actor. Parker Stevenson was born as Richard Stevenson Parker on June 4, 1952 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Rye, New York, an affluent suburb of New York City. Born into a wealthy family listed in the Social Register, his father, Richard Stevenson, was an investment advisor, and his mother, Sarah Meade, was an actress who had appeared on Broadway and acted mostly in commercials. Although by late adolescence Stevenson had matured into a heartthrob with handsome, all-American good looks, he claims that he was a hideous child. "I was a horrendously ugly kid," he remembered. "My mother had given me a crew cut. I had huge buckteeth because I'd sucked my thumb when I was little. My ears stuck out three inches from my head. My eyes were so close together I looked cross-eyed."

In addition to the bad haircut, Stevenson also got the acting bug from his mother. He appeared in his first commercial, a spot for Clearasil, at the age of 14 and continued to appear in commercials throughout his teenage years. "I started in show business doing commercials," Stevenson recalled. "If my mother hadn't been doing it, I might not have thought about it."

Stevenson attended the Brooks School, an elite preparatory school near Boston. In addition to excelling as a student, he acted sporadically in commercials and filmed his first movie during his senior year. A Separate Peace, the film adaptation of John Knowles' popular novel, came out in 1972, shortly after Stevenson's graduation, and established him as an up-and-coming young actor.

TV Fame

Stevenson attended Princeton University to study architecture while continuing to pursue acting on the side. In 1974, he took a year off from college to play the leading role in the TV movie Our Time. Two years later, he gained further exposure for playing a young heartthrob in the film Lifeguard. Stevenson graduated from Princeton later that year and, as he put it, "decided it would be nice to make a living at what I was already doing for fun—acting."

Thanks in large part to his prep school good looks, in 1977 Stevenson landed the role of Frank Hardy in The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, playing the older and wiser of the famed amateur detective duo. Almost overnight the show catapulted Stevenson to a level of celebrity he found overwhelming and somewhat uncomfortable.