Bradley Whitford's credits in film, television and theater include work with some of the most noted writers, directors and playwrights in the arts, and constitute a career worthy of a Juilliard-trained actor -- which he is. But stardom is something else altogether, and it remained elusive, at least until 1999 and his appearance on NBC's acclaimed political drama, The West Wing (1999).

Bradley Whitford was born in Madison, Wisconsin, to Genevieve Smith Whitford, a poet and writer, and George Van Norman Whitford. He studied theater and English literature at Wesleyan University and earned a master's degree in theater from the prestigious Juilliard Theater Center. Whitford's first professional performance was in the off-Broadway production of "Curse of the Starving Class," with Kathy Bates. He also starred in the Broadway production of "The West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin's "A Few Good Men." His additional theater credits include "Three Days of Rain" at the Manhattan Theatre Club, "Measure for Measure" at the Lincoln Center, and the title role in "Coriolanus" at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Jane Kaczmarek (15 August 1992 - 2010) ( 3 children)

Trivia

Graduated June 4, 1977, from Madison East High School in Madison, Wisconsin.
Graduated Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut), 1981. Attended Juilliard.
Waited tables at "Panarellas" at 84th & Columbus, New York City.
He and his ex-wife, Jane Kaczmarek, have three children: Frances Whitford was born in January 1997; George Whitford was born on December 23, 1999 and Mary Louisa Whitford was born on November 25, 2002.
Actor Daniel von Bargen has coincidentally appeared with husband and wife actors Jane Kaczmarek and Bradley Whitford in four different projects. Along with Kaczmarek, he appeared in Malcolm in the Middle (2000). With Whitford, he was in RoboCop 3 (1993), Philadelphia (1993) and The West Wing (1999).

[explaining his once-made-remark that actors are alcoholics waiting to happen] What I meant by that was it's a very tiny percentage of humanity that would entertain the notion of making a spectacle out of themselves, whether on television or even more excruciatingly live onstage. And that indicates to me an incredibly assertive part of that person. The problem is you take these people with this incredibly rare assertive impulse and put them in a business that renders them totally passive. Usually you have to wait for somebody to write the play or to direct the play; you have to get chosen for the play; you have to see if the play does well. There's no resolution to that kind of assertiveness that is the crux of what I think makes a lot of actors very good and the passivity that the business imposes on you.
I'm actually very personally conservative about what my kids are exposed to, and I've raised them like any parent where you're fighting the inevitable premature loss of their innocence because of a lot of crap that gets made. It is, by the way, upsetting to me that we live in a culture where the definition of obscenity is the act of procreation.