Kevin David Sorbo is an American actor best known for the roles of Hercules in Hercules:
The Legendary Journeys, Captain Dylan Hunt in Andromeda and Kull in Kull the Conqueror.
Early life Sorbo was born in Mound, Minnesota, where
he attended Mound Westonka High School.
He is the son of Ardis, a nurse, and Lynn Sorbo, a junior high school mathematics and
biology teacher.
His father is of Norwegian descent, while his mother has English, German and Scottish
ancestry.
He was raised in a Lutheran family.
Sorbo attended Minnesota State University Moorhead, where he double majored in marketing
and advertising.
To help make tuition, he began to work as a model for print and television advertising
in the 1980s.
Career Sorbo started his acting career in 1986 making
guest appearances in several television series such as 1st & Ten, Murder She Wrote and The
Commish.
In 1994, he shot to fame when he played the role of Hercules in the television film Hercules
and the Amazon Women.
This was the first in a series of television films that served as pilots for the TV series
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, which ran from 1995 to 1999.
He also directed a few episodes of the series.
At the same time, Sorbo also guest-starred as Hercules in episodes of the 1995–2001
spin-off series Xena: Warrior Princess and provided the voice of Hercules in the 1998
direct-to-video animated film Hercules and Xena - The Animated Movie: The Battle for
Mount Olympus.
Other voice-over work followed, with Sorbo providing the voices of Reiko and Quan Chi
in the 1997 video game Mortal Kombat 4.
In between the years playing Hercules, he played his first leading film role in Kull
the Conqueror.
After Hercules came to an end, Sorbo played the starring role of Captain Dylan Hunt in
the science-fiction drama series Andromeda from 2000 to 2005.
In 2006, he played a recurring role on the final season of The O.C. and guest-starred
in the sitcom Two and a Half Men.
In 2007, he starred in the direct-to-video film Walking Tall: The Payback, which was
a sequel to the 2004 film Walking Tall.
He reprised his role in the second sequel, Walking Tall: Lone Justice which released
later that year.
He also starred in the Lifetime Channel film Last Chance Café, the Hallmark Channel film
Avenging Angel, co-starring his real life wife Sam Jenkins and guest starred as a bounty
hunter in the season-two episode "Bounty Hunters!" of the series Psych.
He appeared in the 2008 spoof film Meet the Spartans, which was a box office success despite
being universally negatively reviewed by critics.
He starred in the Albert Pyun directed SciFi Vampire flick Tales of the Ancient Empire.
He served as Executive Producer and star of the movie Abel's Field in 2012.
In 2012, Sorbo appeared in an episode of "Celebrity Ghost Stories" to recount an experience he
had while in Minnesota shortly after he graduated from college.
He and his girlfriend claimed to have seen the ghost of the "Bride of White Rock Lake"
– a woman who supposedly died on her wedding day, murdered by a former lover.
Sorbo voiced one of the main protagonists, Prometheus, in the Wii video game The Conduit.
Sorbo returned to the role of Hercules in a more sinister portrayal, in the video game
God of War III released for the PlayStation 3 in March 2010.
In July 2013, Sorbo, along with his wife, Sam, provided voice over for characters in
the video game Cloudberry Kingdom'♙ In an outtake clip from the Hercules TV series
posted in 2010, Sorbo, portraying an evil Doppelgänger of his regular character, says
"Wait a minute.
This isn't my world.
Disappointed!"
Due to the non-sequitur sound of the line, the scene was widely misinterpreted as Sorbo
reading aloud the stage direction "disappointed".
Sorbo explained in 2013 interview that "disappointed" did not appear in the script, but rather was
him breaking character as an in-joke between him and the crew.
He was referencing a scene from the film A Fish Called Wanda in which Otto cracks a safe
only to find it empty, and screams, "Disappointed!"
at it in frustration.
Personal life On January 5, 1998, Sorbo married actress
Sam Jenkins, whom he met the previous year when she had a guest role on Hercules.
They have three children: Braedon Cooper, Shane Haaken, and Octavia Flynn.
Sorbo is the spokesman and chair of A World Fit for Kids!, a non-profit organization that
trains teenagers to become mentors to younger children.
In late 1997 while on a publicity tour for Kull the Conqueror and between the fourth
and fifth seasons of Hercules, the newly engaged Sorbo experienced an aneurysm in his shoulder
which caused three strokes.
As a result, he was weakened for the next several years, a condition kept secret from
the public while he recovered.
During the last two seasons of Hercules, Sorbo had a reduced filming schedule to accommodate
his condition, and more guest stars were brought in to lighten the load.
The strokes, thought to be triggered when chiropractic manipulation of his shoulder
released multiple blood clots from the aneurysm, left Sorbo with a permanent 10 percent vision
loss, weakness, impaired balance, and migraines.
In his 2011 autobiography True Strength, Sorbo revealed the details of his injury and how
his wife Sam helped him recover.
Sorbo is a Christian and considers himself politically independent.
He has expressed interest in the libertarian philosophy of agorism.
Sorbo believes Hollywood has limited his career because of his conservative political and
Christian views.
Filmography Actor
Guest star Producer
Director Video games
References
External links Official website
Kevin Sorbo at the Internet Movie Database