John Astin was born on March 30, 1930.
As of June 18, 2021, he is 91 years old.
Astin was born in Baltimore, Maryland, at a time when his father (Dr. Allen Varley Astin) served as the National Bureau of Standards. After graduating from Johns Hopkins University in 1952, John Astin began his acting career in the theater.
Eventually, he landed an understudy role on Broadway and also ventured into voiceover work for television commercials.
Astin gained his first major exposure when he was cast in the (small) role of Glad Hand, a social worker.
That helped launch Astin onto the comedy scene, leading to a guest-star appearance in the Dennis the Menace. A couple of TV appearances later, he landed the role of Gomez Addams, the male lead in the 1960s sitcom version of The Addams Family (1964-66).
Gomez was a defining role for Astin, and afforded him many other opportunities in Hollywood, including several reprisals of Gomez for various TV specials and cartoon adaptations across the decades.
In the 1980s, Astin shared his comedic (and dramatic) talents with a whole new generation of fans when he took on the role of “Buddy” in Night Court, a sitcom that served as a vehicle for Harry Anderson’s comedic stylings. Buddy was a mental patient who turned up in various cases tried before Judge Harry Stone (Anderson) from time to time, always with zany takes and under unusual circumstances.
Eventually, it came to light that Buddy was Harry’s long lost father.
While Astin’s appearances on the small and big screen have dwindled in the 2010s and 2020s, he still turns up occasionally, most recently as the voice of Uncle Dudley in a 2017 episode of the animated Justice League Action series.
