Frank Theodore "Ted" Levine (born May 29, 1957) is an American actor, perhaps best known for playing serial killer Jame Gumb in the 1991 blockbuster thriller The Silence of the Lambs and Captain Leland Stottlemeyer in Monk. Other notable acting credits include Heat, Bullet, The Hills Have Eyes and American Gangster.
Levine was born in Parma, Ohio. In the mid-1970s, he attended Marlboro College and the University of Chicago. He became a fixture in the Chicago theatre scene and joined the Remains Theatre which was co-founded by Gary Cole and William L. Petersen. After his stage experience, Levine began to devote most of his energy during the 1980s toward finding roles in film and television such as a minor part in Charlie's Angels. He also managed to get a micro part in Rambo: First Blood Part II, as one of the men getting the P.O.W's off the helicopter.
After his breakout role in The Silence of the Lambs, there was a period where he was typecast in villainous roles. Levine avoided this by playing more protagonists, such as a member of Al Pacino's police unit in Heat, astronaut Alan Shepard in the HBO mini-series From the Earth to the Moon, and Paul Walker's police superior Sergeant Tanner in The Fast and the Furious. In the drama Georgia, he played Mare Winningham's husband, one of his most sympathetic characters.
His resumé also includes an uncredited role as the voice of the sociopathic trucker "Rusty Nail" in 2001's Joy Ride, and his performance as Detective Sam Nico in the 2003 film Wonderland, based on the gruesome murders in Los Angeles Wonderland District. Since 2002, he has co-starred in his role as Captain Leland Stottlemeyer on USA Network's detective series Monk, starring Tony Shalhoub.
Levine also provided the voice of the supervillain Sinestro in Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited. Most recently, Levine appeared as a patriarch whose family takes a turn for the worse in the remake of The Hills Have Eyes (2006). In 2007, he portrayed local Sheriff James Timberlake in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and appeared in Ridley Scott's American Gangster, alongside Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.
In a January 12, 2006 interview on The Late Late Show (CBS), actor Seth Green credited Levine as the inspiration for the voice of his character Chris Griffin on Family Guy.
