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Richard Hatch (actor)
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Richard Hatch (b. May 21, 1945, in Santa Monica, California) is an American actor. He is best known for his role of Captain Apollo on the original Battlestar Galactica television series, for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination, and the recurring role of Tom Zarek in the second incarnation of Battlestar Galactica. He began his theatrical career with the Los Angeles Repertory Theater. He starred off-Broadway in several plays and musicals and won the Obie Award for his work in PS Your Cat Is Dead in Chicago.
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Richard Hatch (b. May 21, 1945, in Santa Monica, California) is an American actor. He is best known for his role of Captain Apollo on the original Battlestar Galactica television series, for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination, and the recurring role of Tom Zarek in the second incarnation of Battlestar Galactica. He began his theatrical career with the Los Angeles Repertory Theater. He starred off-Broadway in several plays and musicals and won the Obie Award for his work in PS Your Cat Is Dead in Chicago. He also had recurring roles in the soap operas Dynasty, All My Children and Santa Barbara.
Before Battlestar Galactica, he replaced Michael Douglas in The Streets of San Francisco and won Germany's Bravo Youth Magazine Award for the role. He has also starred in such movies as The Hatfields and The McCoys with Jack Palance, Addie and The Kings Of Hearts with Jason Robards, Last Of The Belles with Susan Sarandon, and the cult classic Deadman's Curve where he portrayed Jan Berry of the musical group Jan and Dean. In 1975 Hatch starred with Doug Chapin in "Best Friends". Hatch can also be heard in numerous television commercials and other voice-overs.
Hatch wrote, co-directed and executive-produced a Battlestar Galactica trailer, called The Second Coming that won acclaim at science-fiction conventions. He produced the trailer to pressure Universal into creating a new series of Battlestar Galactica that would have been a direct continuation of the original series. Original actors John Colicos (Baltar), Terry Carter (Col. Tigh) and Jack Stauffer (Bojay) appeared in the trailer along with Hatch himself. It is presumed that the actors would have appeared in the series itself. Hatch also believed that he could persuade Dirk Benedict to return and play Starbuck.
He also co-authored a series of novels based on continuing the voyage of the Battlestar Galactica with his character (Captain Apollo) replacing Adama as Commander of the Galactica.
However, Battlestar Galactica returned to television screens as a re-imagining, rather than the sequel for which Hatch had campaigned. Initially, Hatch was bitterly disappointed by this turn of events and was highly critical of the prospective new series on his web site. However, Hatch developed a respect for Ronald D. Moore, the new series' producer, when he appeared as a featured guest at Galacticon (the Battlestar Galactica 25th anniversary convention, hosted by Hatch) and answered questions posed by a very hostile audience.
In 2003, Hatch was offered and accepted a recurring role in the new Battlestar Galactica series. He plays Tom Zarek, a terrorist turned politician, who spent twenty years in prison for blowing up a government building; Hatch has said the character was presented to him as a Nelson Mandela figure, and that he views Zarek as challenging the status quo and working for the common man. In an irony probably intended by the show's producers, Hatch/Zarek spends most of his first episode in heated debate with Captain Apollo, the role that Hatch had played in the original series. He has appeared in several further episodes of the series as a guest star.
In 2004, he stated to Sci-Fi Pulse that he had felt resentment over the failure of the Galactica continuation and was left "exhausted and sick... I had, over the past several years, bonded deeply with the original characters and story... writing the novels and the comic books and really campaigning to bring back the show". After accepting the Zarek role, "it was a very deep and profound struggle for me to let go and realize that I was not the creator of the series and it didn’t belong to me... I’ve finally come to terms with and accepted that."
By 2007, Hatch's Zarek had received his own comic book series from Dynamite Entertainment Comics, which followed along with the on-going comic series of the re-imagined Galactica, as well as being a prequel story about Zarek himself. On the TV series, Tom Zarek eventually became Vice President of the colonies, but in the second half of the fourth and final season, Hatch/Zarek was killed off after an unsuccessful coup attempt by Zarek, Felix Gaeta, and a few other crewmates aboard the Galactica. Zarek and Gaeta were executed by firing squad, which ended Richard's involvment in the re-imagined Galactica series.
Hatch is in pre-production of his own space opera, The Great War of Magellan, and has written a comic book series and role-playing game in support of this. He is presently working a novel trilogy for The Great War of Magellan with his Battlestar Galactica co-author, Brad Linaweaver.
When not acting, Richard lectures and conducts workshops on acting, self-expression, and communication throughout the world.
Battlestar Galactica Bibliography
- Armageddon (1 August 1997)
- Warhawk (1 September 1998)
- Resurrection (1 July 2001)
- Rebellion (1 July 2002)
- Paradis (1 July 2003)
- Destiny (29 June 2004)
- Redemption (25 November 2005)
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