Christian Clemenson
Christian Dayton Clemenson[1] (born March 17, 1958)[2][3][4] is an American film and television actor. He is well known for his portrayal of Jerry “Hands” Espenson in the television series Boston Legal, for which he was nominated for three Emmy Awards and winning the 2006 Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series.[5] He has appeared in a number of highly acclaimed films, including Hannah and Her Sisters, Broadcast News, Apollo 13 and The Big Lebowski, and portrayed Tom Burnett in Paul Greengrass’ United 93. He starred in The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story as prosecutor William Hodgman.
Clemenson was born and raised in Humboldt, Iowa, the son of drug store owners Ruth Alzora (Dayton) and Ernest Arnold Clemenson.[1] In his early teens, he delivered the Des Moines Register, which had a long tradition of awarding scholarships to top east-coast preparatory schools to a select few “paper boys.”[6] Clemenson, a straight-A junior high school student, won a Register scholarship to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.[7] In 1973, while Clemenson was enrolled at Phillips, his father died at age 58.[8] He participated in many theatrical productions at Phillips Academy.
Upon graduation from Phillips in 1976, he entered Harvard College. From his freshman year onward he received important roles in campus stage productions. When Clemenson starred in a Harvard Lampoon sketch comedy show, a Harvard Crimson theater critic described Clemenson as “hugely talented actor who can trigger hysteria with any of a dozen subtle expressions or inflections.”[9] Other Crimson critics described his performances in Shakespeare plays as “a tour de force of sheer talent and intelligence” (in The Winter’s Tale)[10] and “a very fine and subtle performance” (in Measure for Measure).[11] He displayed early on his remarkable range when he undertook with inimitable flair and hilarious effect the hugely solemn role of Erde “the green-faced torso”, goddess of the Earth, in Peter Sellars’s Loeb Drama Center puppet production of Wagner’s Ring cycle (1979)
