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Dean George Cain (born July 31, 1966) is an American actor best known for playing Superman in the television series The New Adventures of Superman co-starring with Desperate Housewives star Teri Hatcher.

Born Dean George Tanaka, in Mount Clemens, Michigan to actress Sharon Thomas and U.S. Army serviceman Roger Tanaka. His parents divorced before he was born, but his mother later married film director Christopher Cain and moved to Malibu, California.

At Santa Monica High School, Cain excelled in sports. When he graduated in 1984, he turned down 17 athletic scholarships to attend Princeton University, where he went on to captain the volleyball team and play free safety on the football team (setting the NCAA record for the most interceptions per game in a single season), in addition to joining the Zeta Psi fraternity. He also dated actress Brooke Shields who was one year ahead of him at the university. Cain graduated from Princeton in 1988 with an B.A. in history. The title of his senior thesis was The History and Development of the Functions of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Immediately after graduating Cain signed on as a free agent with the Buffalo Bills, a NFL football team, but a knee injury during training ended his football career before it began. With little hope of returning to sports, he turned to screenwriting and then acting, shooting dozens of commercials and appearing on popular television shows like Grapevine, A Different World and Beverly Hills 90210. In 1993, Cain took on the role of Superman in the new television series The New Adventures of Superman, which ran until 1997.

In 1998, Cain started the Angry Dragon Entertainment production company, which produces the new TBS Superstation television series Ripley's Believe It or Not!. He has also starred in several films, including The Broken Hearts Club (2000), Out of Time (2003) and Bailey's Billions (2004). In 2004 he portrayed Scott Peterson in the fact-based made for television movie The Laci Peterson Story.

Trivia

  • The college Dean in How High is repeatedly referred to as "Dean Cain."

  • Dean Cain's portrayal of Superman was also notable for having the reverse of the traditional distinction between Clark Kent and Superman's hairstyles; here it is Superman who has the slicked-back hair and Clark whose fringe falls more naturally, perhaps to reinforce the notion that Kent is the "genuine" personality where as Superman is the artificial disguise. In neither mode does the character feature his trademark spitcurl, making it one of the few depictions of Superman to lack this distinctive feature.

  • Frequent allusions to Dean Cain can be heard on the Extralife podcast by Scott Johnson and his co-hosts.

Filmography

External links

1966 births | American film actors | American television actors | American football safeties | Asian American sportspeople | Entertainers who played football | Eurasian actors | Japanese Americans | Law & Order: Special Victims Unit actors | Living people | Princeton University alumni | Actors who portrayed Superman | Zeta Psi brothers | Princeton Tigers football players

Dean Cain | Dean Cain | ディーン・ケイン | Dean Cain | Dean Cain

 

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