When college
basketball star Marc Blucas did not make the NBA, he decided to
apply to law school. The day before he was scheduled to take the
Law School Admission Test, he unwound by watching Rob Reiner's
courtroom drama A Few Good Men (1992) and realized that what
excited him about the film was not the law, but the acting. A
few years later, Blucas was a television veteran with several
feature films under his belt and a coveted spot in Vanity Fair's
prestigious Hollywood Issue.
+ Born Marcus
Paul Blucas on January 11, 1972, the actor grew up in the
small town of Girard, PA. The son of a school superintendent and
an education administrator, he made his stage debut as a cupcake
in his third grade class' production of Hansel and Gretel. At
6'2" tall, he was the star center on the Girard High School
basketball team. An All-State athlete, Blucas averaged 20.8
points and 10.1 rebounds per game and lead his team to two 2A
championships. In his senior year, the team went undefeated and
was ranked among the best high school basketball teams by USA
Today. Blucas earned a full scholarship to Wake Forest
University in Winston-Salem, NC, where he majored in business
with a minor in speech communication and played shooting guard
and small forward for the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. He competed
in four NCAA tournaments and won the Murray C. Greason Sr.
Athletic Academic Award and the Weaver-James-Corrigan
Postgraduate Scholarship in his senior year. When Blucas was not
picked in the NBA draft, he joined the Manchester Giants and
played pro basketball in England for one season. After starting
a company that was targeted to assist athletes in endorsement
and contract negotiations, he intended to go to law school but
tried his hand at acting instead.
Blucas had
already appeared opposite Marg Helgenberger and Kris
Kristofferson in the television movie Inflammable (1995), when a
friend at Wake Forest informed him that the producers of the
Whoopi Goldberg comedy Eddie (1996) were looking for a
baby-faced basketball player to appear in the picture. He was a
perfect fit and made his feature-film debut as a benched player
on the New York Knicks. After working as the technical advisor
on NBC's sports biopic Never Give Up: The Jimmy V Story (1996),
Blucas was able to expand his part as an athlete in
Pleasantville (1997) by coordinating the film's basketball
sequences. He then dedicated himself to honing his craft through
workshops and acting classes, before resurfacing as Jerry
O'Connell's best friend in the NBC miniseries The '60s (1999),
and as Carmen Electra's ex-beau in Jeff Abugov's The Mating
Habits of the Earthbound Human (1999). He also appeared on MTV's
Undressed, the WB's Clueless, and HBO's Arli$$.
Blucas'
breakthrough role came in the fall of 1999, when he was cast as
a regular on Joss Whedon's hit series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Portraying Buffy's (Sarah Michelle Gellar) demon-hunting
boyfriend, Riley Finn, he became a recognizable actor with a
sturdy fan base. Blucas left the show in 2000 (with the promise
that he would be back) in order to pursue film work. After
starring in the baseball-themed Summer Catch (2001) with Freddie
Prinze Jr. and Jessica Biel, he began a back-to-back shooting
schedule that included Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strike
Back (2001) with Ben Affleck and Jason Lee, John Sayles'
Sunshine State (2001) with Angela Bassett and Edie Falco, and
Randall Wallace's We Were Soldiers (2002) with Mel Gibson and
Chris Klein.
Marc kept his
promise and returned to Buffy to bring closure to his character,
Riley Finn, in mid-season 6 in 2002. He then joined the casts of
the Gwyneth Paltrow comedy A View From the Top (2002), the
thriller They (2002), and the period piece I Capture the Castle
(2002).
Blucas recently
signed on to director Alex Steyermark's Prey for Rock 'n' Roll,
which stars Gina Gershon, Jennifer Esposito, Jane Adams, and
Shelly Cole as a struggling Los Angeles-based girl band. Despite
his onscreen success and his busy schedule, the actor still
makes time for basketball. He plays on an adult team and serves
as a referee for a Los Angeles youth league.