Carel Struycken (born July 30, 1948) is an actor in film, television, and stage. He is an exceptionally tall man at 7 feet (2.1 meters) 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.
Struycken was born in The Hague, Netherlands. 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!". The movie was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The turning point in his acting career however was playing the antagonist Terak in Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, based on the Ewok creatures from Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. 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 He currently resides in Pasadena, California.
He has been diagnosed with acromegaly.
Struycken as Lurch in The Addams Family film (1991)
