Stan Shaw is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 actor.

Born in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, he is the son of Bertha Shaw and saxophonist Eddie Shaw

Eddie Shaw

Eddie Shaw is an African American, Chicago blues tenor saxophonist.-Biography:In his teenage years, Shaw played tenor saxophone with local blues musicians such as Little Milton and Willie Love. At the age of 14, he was involved in a jam session in Greenville, Mississippi with Ike Turner's band...

, and cousin of the late soul singers Sam Cooke

Sam Cooke

Samuel Cook, , better known under the stage name Sam Cooke, was an American gospel, R&B, soul, and pop singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur. He is considered to be one of the pioneers and founders of soul music. He is commonly known as the King of Soul for his distinctive vocal abilities and...

 and Tyrone Davis

Tyrone Davis

Tyrone Davis , born Tyrone Fettson, was a leading American soul singer with a distinctive style, recording a long list of hit records over a period of more than 20 years. He had three no...

 Brother of Vaan Shaw (guitarist/wolfgang). Shaw started his acting career in the Chicago production of the Broadway musical Hair

Hair (musical)

Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...

as well as the Broadway production of The Me Nobody Knows. His last Broadway show, Via Galactica was directed by Sir Peter Hall.

Before becoming an actor, Shaw was a karate

Karate

is a martial art developed in the Ryukyu Islands in what is now Okinawa, Japan. It was developed from indigenous fighting methods called and Chinese kenpō. Karate is a striking art using punching, kicking, knee and elbow strikes, and open-handed techniques such as knife-hands. Grappling, locks,...

, judo

Judo

is a modern martial art and combat sport created in Japan in 1882 by Jigoro Kano. Its most prominent feature is its competitive element, where the object is to either throw or takedown one's opponent to the ground, immobilize or otherwise subdue one's opponent with a grappling maneuver, or force an...

, and jujutsu

Jujutsu

Jujutsu , also known as jujitsu, ju-jitsu, or Japanese jiu-jitsu, is a Japanese martial art and a method of close combat for defeating an armed and armored opponent in which one uses no weapon, or only a short weapon....

 instructor in Chicago. He holds first dan black belt

Black belt (martial arts)

In martial arts, the black belt is a way to describe a graduate of a field where a practitioner's level is often marked by the color of the belt. The black belt is commonly the highest belt color used and denotes a degree of competence. It is often associated with a teaching grade though...

 in judo and jujutsu and a second dan in karate.

Shaw appeared in Rocky

Rocky

Rocky is a 1976 American sports drama film directed by John G. Avildsen and both written by and starring Sylvester Stallone. It tells the rags to riches American Dream story of Rocky Balboa, an uneducated but kind-hearted debt collector for a loan shark in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...

(1976) as Dipper, another boxer. In a deleted scene, Dipper, infuriated by the attention Rocky has received, challenges him before a television reporter. He also played a professional fighter in Tough Enough

Tough Enough (film)

Tough Enough is a 1983 film directed by Richard Fleischer, starring Dennis Quaid, Pam Grier, Warren Oates and Stan Shaw.-Plot synopsis:A down-on-his-luck country & western singer from Fort Worth enters a "toughman" competition to help pay his family's bills. Surprisingly, he does well against the...

(1983), Harlem Nights

Harlem Nights

Harlem Nights is a 1989 comedy-drama crime film starring Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. The film also featured Michael Lerner, Danny Aiello, Redd Foxx, Della Reese and Murphy's brother Charlie Murphy...

(1989), and Snake Eyes

Snake Eyes (film)

Snake Eyes is a conspiracy thriller film directed by Brian De Palma, one featuring his trademark use of long tracking shots and split screens. It starred Nicolas Cage, Gary Sinise and Carla Gugino....

(1998). One of his most notable roles was his appearance as Alex Haley

Alex Haley

Alexander Murray Palmer Haley was an African-American writer. He is best known as the author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and the coauthor of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.-Early life:...

's maternal grandfather Will Palmer in the 1979 miniseries Roots: The Next Generations

Roots: The Next Generations

Roots: The Next Generations is a 1979 television miniseries that continues the story of the family of Alex Haley from the 1880s, and their life in Henning, Tennessee, to the 1960s, with Haley researching his family history and his travels to Africa to learn of his ancestor, Kunta Kinte...

. Another highly notable role was Private Washington in The Boys in Company C (1978). Shaw also played in The Great Santini

The Great Santini

The Great Santini is a 1979 film which tells the story of a Marine officer whose success as a military aviator contrasts with his shortcomings as a husband and father. The film explores the high price of heroism and self-sacrifice...

(1979) as Toomer Smalls with Robert Duvall

Robert Duvall

Robert Selden Duvall is an American actor and director. He has won an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and a BAFTA over the course of his career....

 and David Keith

David Keith

David Lemuel Keith is an American actor and director. He received Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actor and New Star of the Year – Actor for his performance in An Officer and a Gentleman.-Career:...

. After a part in the 1991 film Fried Green Tomatoes

Fried Green Tomatoes (film)

Fried Green Tomatoes is a 1991 comedy-drama film based on the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg. It was released in the UK under the novel's full title. Directed by Jon Avnet and written by Fannie Flagg and Carol Sobieski, it stars Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy,...

, he had a role in the 1995 comedy Houseguest

Houseguest

Houseguest is a 1995 feature film starring Sinbad and Phil Hartman and directed by Randall Miller.-Plot:Kevin Franklin is an inner-city Pittsburgh native; raised in an orphanage, has delusions of grandeur, and talks about getting rich and driving a Porsche one day...

alongside Sinbad and appeared as a pirate in Cutthroat Island

Cutthroat Island

Cutthroat Island is a 1995 action adventure film directed by Renny Harlin. The film stars Geena Davis, Matthew Modine, and Frank Langella. The film received mixed reviews from critics and was a major box office bomb: listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest box office flop of...

with Geena Davis

Geena Davis

Virginia Elizabeth "Geena" Davis is an American actress, film producer, writer, former fashion model, and a women's Olympics archery team semi-finalist...

. He also appeared as George Tyrell in the 1996 disaster film Daylight

Daylight

Daylight or the light of day is the combination of all direct and indirect sunlight outdoors during the daytime. This includes direct sunlight, diffuse sky radiation, and both of these reflected from the Earth and terrestrial objects. Sunlight scattered or reflected from objects in outer space is...

. His television credits include episodes of Matlock

Matlock (TV series)

Matlock is an American television legal drama, starring Andy Griffith in the title role of attorney Ben Matlock. The show originally aired from September 23, 1986 to May 8, 1992 on NBC, where it replaced The A-Team, then from November 5, 1992 until May 7, 1995 on ABC.The show's format was similar...

, The Young Riders

The Young Riders

The Young Riders is an American Western television series created by Ed Spielman that presents a fictionalized account of a group of young Pony Express riders based at the Sweetwater Station in the Nebraska Territory during the years leading up to the American Civil War...

, Murder, She Wrote

Murder, She Wrote

Murder, She Wrote is an American television mystery series starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. The series aired for 12 seasons from 1984 to 1996 on the CBS network, with 264 episodes transmitted. It was followed by four TV films and a spin-off series,...

, The X-Files

The X-Files

The X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...

, and a 2009 episode of CSI

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is an American crime drama television series, which premiered on CBS on October 6, 2000. The show was created by Anthony E. Zuiker and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer...

. He had a regular role in the 1983 TV series The Mississippi

The Mississippi (TV series)

The Mississippi was a television series which ran for 2 seasons from 1982 to 1984. The series consisted of 27 episodes, 1 pilot, 6 first season episodes and 17 episodes in the second season. The series was written by Aubrey Solomon and starred Ralph Waite, Linda Miller and Stan Shaw. The series...

.

External links