Carel Struycken

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Carel Struycken
Image:CarelStruycken.jpg Carel Struycken on The WB series Charmed
Born	July 30 1948 (age 61) The Hague, Netherlands
Height	7'0" (213 centimeters)
Notable roles	Lurch in The Addams Family

Carel Struycken (born July 30, 1948 in The Hague, Netherlands) is a character actor in film, television, and stage. He is an exceptionally tall man at 7' (213 cm) and thus is often called upon to play character or comedic roles in which height plays a major part. Notably he was featured as Mr. Homn on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, as Lurch the butler in the Addams Family films The Addams Family, Addams Family Values, and Addams Family Reunion, and as The Giant on the Twin Peaks television series.

1 Biography
2 Filmography
3 External links
4 References

[edit] Biography

When he was only 4 years old his family moved to Curaçao, an island in the Caribbean. At age 15, when he was living on the island of Curaçao, he composed several Caribbean waltzes. At 16 he returned to his home country, where he finished secondary school. He graduated from the directing program at the film school in Amsterdam, following which he spent a year at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. After that he collaborated on a number of projects of writer/director Rene Daalder. He was "discovered" as an actor at the corner of Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles by a lady who had abandoned her car in the middle of the street, calling after him: "We need you for a movie!".<ref>Carel Struycken tells the anecdote about his discovery as an actor in an interview on the daily Dutch TV show De Wereld Draait Door, October 2, 2006</ref> The movie was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The turning point in his acting career however was Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, based on the Ewok creatures from Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. In addition to cinema he has also appeared on TV, Carel has also helped in hardware and software development of Virtual Reality systems. He also starred in the 1987 film The Witches of Eastwick with Jack Nicholson