Josef Sommer

Josef Sommer

Birth : 1934-06-26, Greifswald, Germany

History

​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.   Josef Sommer (born June 26, 1934) is an American film actor. He was born Maximilian Josef Sommer in Greifswald, Germany and was raised in North Carolina, the son of Elisabeth and Clemons Sommer, a professor of art history at the University of North Carolina. He studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He has a daughter, Maria. Sommer made his acting debut at the age of nine in a North Carolina production of Watch on the Rhine. He made his film debut in 1971 in Dirty Harry, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind in 1977, and appeared in Witness opposite Harrison Ford (where he played a crooked police officer) and Moonlight and Valentino with Elizabeth Perkins. He appeared as President Gerald Ford opposite Gena Rowlands in the 1987 made-for-TV movie The Betty Ford Story. He has also had starring roles in two short-lived series, Hothouse (1988) and Under Cover (early 1990s). As of 2007, he has appeared, as a character actor, in almost 100 films. Some of his more famous roles have been as a crooked businessman or a corrupt politician. Description above from the Wikipedia article Josef Sommer, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Profile

Josef Sommer

Movies

Stop-Loss
Senator Orton Worrell
A veteran soldier returns from his completed tour of duty in Iraq, only to find his life turned upside down when he is arbitrarily ordered to return to field duty by the Army.
The Invasion
Dr. Henryk Belicec
Washington, D.C. psychologist Carol Bennell and her colleague Dr. Ben Driscoll are the only two people on Earth who are aware of an epidemic running rampant through the city. They discover an alien virus aboard a crashed space shuttle that transforms anyone who comes into contact with it into unfeeling drones while they sleep. Carol realizes her son holds the key to stopping the spread of the plague and she races to find him before it is too late.
X-Men: The Last Stand
The President
When a cure is found to treat mutations, lines are drawn amongst the X-Men—led by Professor Charles Xavier—and the Brotherhood, a band of powerful mutants organised under Xavier's former ally, Magneto.
The Elephant King
Bill Hunt
The story of two brothers who lead totally different lives. Jake Hunt enjoys life to the fullest in Thailand, while his shy brother Oliver deals with his own depressions back home in the USA. Their dominant mother wants Jake back home and for this reason, Oliver is sent to Thailand to retrieve his brother. Once there, Oliver finds himself in Jake's bizarre life and falls in love with a beautiful girl, Lek. However, it is not a coincidence that she and Oliver have met
Searching for Paradise
Carl Greenslate
A young woman, coping with the death of her father, embarks on a quest to meet a Hollywood star with whom she has become obsessed.
The Sum of All Fears
Senator Jessup
When the president of Russia suddenly dies, a man whose politics are virtually unknown succeeds him. The change in political leaders sparks paranoia among American CIA officials, so CIA director Bill Cabot recruits a young analyst to supply insight and advice on the situation. Then the unthinkable happens: a nuclear bomb explodes in a U.S. city, and America is quick to blame the Russians.
The Family Man
Peter Lassiter
Jack's lavish, fast-paced lifestyle changes one Christmas night when he stumbles into a grocery store holdup and disarms the gunman. The next morning he wakes up in bed lying next to Kate, his college sweetheart he left in order to pursue his career, and to the horrifying discovery that his former life no longer exists. As he stumbles through this alternate suburban universe, Jack finds himself at a crossroad where he must choose between his high-power career and the woman he loves.
Shaft
Curt Flemming
New York police detective John Shaft arrests Walter Wade Jr. for a racially motivated slaying. But the only eyewitness disappears, and Wade jumps bail for Switzerland. Two years later Wade returns to face trial, confident his money and influence will get him acquitted -- especially since he's paid a drug kingpin to kill the witness.
The Next Best Thing
Richard Whittaker
A comedy-drama about best friends - one a straight woman, Abbie, the other a gay man, Robert - who decide to have a child together. Five years later, Abbie falls in love with a straight man and wants to move away with her and Robert's little boy Sam, and a nasty custody battle ensues.
The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer
An account of early 1970s social activist Ira Einhorn, who allegedly murdered his girlfriend and then fled the country.
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Winds of Change
Woodrow Wilson
In the nineteenth film in the series, in May 1919, Indy is working as a translator at the historic Paris Peace Conference. He meets up with T.E. Lawrence once more, but finds his ideals have changed a lot since the start of the war. Indy then decides to finally head home to Princeton - even though it means having to face his father. He gets reacquainted with his childhood friend Paul Robeson, who becomes the target of racism when they visit New York City.
Patch Adams
Dr. Eaton
The true story of Dr. Hunter "Patch" Adams, who in the 1970s found that humor is the best medicine, and was willing to do just anything to make his patients laugh—even if it meant risking his own career.
Hidden in America
Edward Millerton
Story of a man whose pride in being the head of his family won't let him accept help from his sick daughters doctor. He has to prove to his kids that even with the death of his wife and the loss of his job that they can and will survive. After hitting brick wall after brick wall comes a glimmer of hope.
Mistrial
Nick Mirsky
When a cop-killer goes free, a detective's search for personal justice veers dangerously out of control. Declaring a mistrial, he takes the accused, the judge and the jury hostage...and begins a trial of his own.
The Chamber
Phelps Bowen
Idealistic young attorney Adam Hall takes on the death row clemency case of his racist grandfather, Sam Cayhall, a former Ku Klux Klan member he has never met.
Strange Days
Palmer Strickland
In the last days of 1999, ex-cop turned street hustler Lenny Nero receives a disc which contains the memories of the murder of a prostitute. With the help of bodyguard Mace, he starts to investigate and is pulled deeper and deeper in a whirl of murder, blackmail and intrigue. Can the pair live to see the new millennium?
Moonlight and Valentino
Thomas Trager
A young widow still grieving over the death of her husband finds herself being comforted by a local housepainter.
Letter to My Killer
A letter is found by a demolition worker that reveals a cover up and a murder that is over 30 years old. The victim is the author of the letter that also contains evidence that leads to the killers. The demolition worker and his wife complicate things when they decide to blackmail the killers, who are wealthy and upstanding citizens of the community, of course.
Kansas
Joseph 'Joe' Farley
When a single mother and high-powered Chicago ad executive returns to her home town in Kansas to care for her ailing father, she rediscovers the joys and hardships of farm life.
Nobody's Fool
Clive Peoples Jr.
Sully is a rascally ne'er-do-well approaching retirement age. While he is pressing a worker's compensation suit for a bad knee, he secretly works for his nemesis, Carl, and flirts with Carl's young wife Toby. Sully's long- forgotten son and family have moved back to town, so Sully faces unfamiliar family responsibilities. Meanwhile, Sully's landlady's banker son plots to push through a new development and evict Sully from his mother's life.
Don't Drink the Water
Ambassador Magee
Somewhere behind the early 1960s cold-war iron curtain, the Hollander family cause an international spying incident when Walter photographs a sunset in a sensitive region. In order to stay out of jail, the Hollanders take refuge in the American Embassy, which is temporarily being run by the absent Ambassador's diplomatically incompetent son, Axel.
The Enemy Within
Defence Secretary Charles Potter
A officer with the Joint Chiefs of Staff uncovers a planned military coup of the U.S. government and has only one week to prevent the takeover.
Assault at West Point: The Court-Martial of Johnson Whittaker
Col. Morrow
The story of Johnson Whittaker, one of the first African-American cadets admitted to West Point. Tied down and beaten by his fellow cadets
Malice
Atty. Lester Adams
A tale about a happily married couple who would like to have children. Tracy teaches infants, Andy's a college professor. Things are never the same after she is taken to hospital and operated upon by Jed, a "know all" doctor.
An American Story
Henry Meade
World War II has ended and many soldiers return to their houses and families. But three of them find themselves with big problems when they arrive at their home village.
The Mighty Ducks
Mr. Ducksworth
After reckless young lawyer Gordon Bombay gets arrested for drunk driving, he must coach a kids hockey team for his community service. Gordon has experience on the ice, but isn't eager to return to hockey, a point hit home by his tense dealings with his own former coach, Jack Reilly. The reluctant Gordon eventually grows to appreciate his team, which includes promising young Charlie Conway, and leads them to take on Reilly's tough players.
Hostages
Tom Sutherland
True account of the six men held hostage by religious extremists in Beirut during the Reagan-Bush era.
Citizen Cohn
Albert Cohn
As lawyer and power broker Roy Cohn lies dying of AIDS in a private hospital room, ghosts from his past visit him as he reflects on his life and loves.
Shadows and Fog
Priest
With a serial strangler on the loose, a bookkeeper wanders around town searching for the vigilante group intent on catching the killer.
When Will I Be Loved?
Martin Ransil
Three disillusioned wives who are contemplating divorce compare notes on their stormy marriages.
William Shakespeare's Hamlet
Polonius
A Danish prince and university student avenges his father's murder by his uncle, who stole the crown and married his mother.
Money, Power, Murder.
Jack Finley
Peter Finley is a cable-TV newsman who is led into a network of sin and conspiracy when he has interest in a missing anchorwoman's story.
Forced March
Richard Kline
Ben Kline is an American television star and a bankable name, who is cast to portray the Hungarian writer Miklos Radnoti, whose journal of poems was found with his body, buried in one of Hungary’s mass graves. Kline is also the son of a Holocaust survivor and has long resented his father’s refusal to speak about the War. Now given the opportunity to play the role of a hero, but faced with the reality of a victim, the boundaries between truth and illusion begin to blur.
Bloodhounds of Broadway
Waldo Winchester
This musical is based on four short stories by Damon Runyon. In one tale, gambler Feet Samuels sells his body to science just as he realizes that Hortense loves him and that he would rather live than die. In another story, Harriet's parrot is killed, and she has problems dealing with her loss. Then, there is a gambler, "Regret", who has bloodhounds on his trail when he becomes a murder suspect. Finally, "The Brain" is bleeding profusely, and his friends search for a way to save his life through a blood transfusion.
Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman
Charles Estiman
The Bionic Woman and the Six-Million-Dollar Man reunite--with a few younger bionic assistants--and try to catch a bionic spy.
Bridge to Silence
Al Duffield
A woman with a hearing problem tries to get het life back together after a car accident that killed her husband.
Chances Are
Judge Fenwick
Louie Jeffries is happily married to Corinne. On their first anniversary, Louie is killed crossing the road. Louie is reincarnated as Alex Finch, and twenty years later, fate brings Alex and Louie's daughter, Miranda, together. It's not until Alex is invited to Louie's home that he begins to remember his former life, wife and best friend. Of course, there's also the problem that he's attracted to Louie's/his own daughter.
Dracula's Widow
Lannon
Dracula's wife, Vanessa, comes back to life and attacks Raymond who has a waxworks museum, where he displays notorious monsters and murderers.
The Rosary Murders
Lieutenant Koznicki
A killer of Detroit clergy confesses to a priest, who turns sleuth because he cannot tell the police.
A Special Friendship
General Winder
During the American Civil War, two women, a wealthy white woman and a freed black slave, join forces to fight for freedom and the abolition of slavery.
The Betty Ford Story
President Gerald Ford
This biographical film was based on the book The Times of My Life written by Chris Chase and Betty Ford.
Double Image
James Angleton
This film tells the true-life story of Yuri Nosenko, a top Soviet KGB agent who defected to the West at the height of the Cold War in 1962.
The Execution of Raymond Graham
Jim Neal
A young man, convicted of the murder of a clerk, who has been on death row for five years and now awaits his execution while his family desperately seek a reprieve.
Target
Barney Taber
A Texan with a secret past searches Europe with his son after the KGB kidnaps his wife.
D.A.R.Y.L.
Dr. Jeffrey Stewart
Daryl is a normal 10-year-old boy in many ways. However, unbeknown to his foster parents and friends, Daryl is actually a government-created robot with superhuman reflexes and mental abilities. Even his name has a hidden meaning -- it's actually an acronym for Data Analyzing Robot Youth Life-form. When the organization that created him deems the "super soldier" experiment a failure and schedules Daryl to be disassembled, it is up to a few rogue scientists to help him escape.
Brotherly Love
Mr. Rafferty
A businessman is stalked by his murderous twin brother, who has just been released from a mental hospital.
Witness
Chief Paul Schaeffer
A sheltered Amish child is the sole witness of a brutal murder in a restroom at a Philadelphia train station, and he must be protected. The assignment falls to a taciturn detective who goes undercover in a Pennsylvania Dutch community. On the farm, he slowly assimilates despite his urban grit and forges a romantic bond with the child's beautiful mother.
Iceman
Whitman
A team of Arctic researchers find a 40,000 year-old man frozen in ice and bring him back to life. Anthropologist Dr. Stanley Shephard wants to befriend the Iceman and learn about the man's past while Dr. Diane Brady and her surgical team want to discover the secret that will allow man to live in a frozen state.
Silkwood
Max Richter
The story of Karen Silkwood, a metallurgy worker at a plutonium processing plant who was purposefully contaminated, psychologically tortured and possibly murdered to prevent her from exposing blatant worker safety violations at the plant.
Saigon: Year Of The Cat
Jack Ockham
The year is 1974, and Barbara Dean (Judi Dench), a British assistant manager in a foreign bank in Saigon, begins a relationship with American Bob Chesneau (Frederic Forrest). She quickly realises that he works for the CIA and he knows that the fall of South Vietnam is very near.
Sparkling Cyanide
George Barton
One year ago on November 2, seven people sat down to dinner at the Luxembourg. One of them, Rosemary Barton, never got up. She was thought to have committed suicide due to post-flu depression.
Independence Day
Sam Taylor
Mary Ann Taylor loves the comforts of her hometown in Mercury, Texas. She has a steady job as a waitress in her father's diner, yet she can't help but feel unfulfilled by a life of pouring coffee and grilling hamburgers. Mary Ann's real passion is photography, but pursuing her dream of becoming a photographer means leaving Mercury behind.
Sophie's Choice
Narrator (voice)
Stingo, a young writer, moves to Brooklyn in 1947 to begin work on his first novel. As he becomes friendly with Sophie and her lover Nathan, he learns that she is a Holocaust survivor. Flashbacks reveal her harrowing story, from pre-war prosperity to Auschwitz. In the present, Sophie and Nathan's relationship increasingly unravels as Stingo grows closer to Sophie and Nathan's fragile mental state becomes ever more apparent.
Still of the Night
George Bynum
When one of his patients is found murdered, psychiatrist Dr. Sam Rice is visited by the investigating officer but refuses to give up any information. He's then visited by the patient's mistress, Brooke Reynolds, whom he quickly falls for despite her being a likely murder suspect. As the police pressure on him intensifies, Rice decides to attempt solving the case on his own and soon discovers that someone is trying to kill him as well.
Hanky Panky
Adrian Pruitt
The complete innocent, Michael Jordon, is drawn into a web of secrecy and government secrets when a girl carrying a mysterious package gets into a taxi with him. When she is later murdered, Michael is the chief suspect and on the run.
Reds
State Department Official
An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.
Absence of Malice
McAdam
Megan Carter is a reporter duped into running an untrue story on Michael Gallagher, a suspected racketeer. He has an alibi for the time his crime was allegedly committed—but it involves an innocent party. When he tells Carter the truth and the newspaper runs it, tragedy follows, forcing Carter to face up to the responsibilities of her job when she is confronted by Gallagher.
Rollover
Roy Lefcourt
An Arab oil organization devises a plan to wreck the world economy in order to cause anarchy and chaos.
The Henderson Monster
Dr. Martin Grossman
A small town becomes gripped by an ethical debate when the community discovers a moody, egotistical scientist is experimenting with DNA and the creation of new life.
Hide in Plain Sight
Jason R. Reid
True story of a man in search of his children after his ex-wife enters the Witness Protection Program.
Doctor Franken
Mr. Parker
This variation of the Frankenstein legend, set in a brownstone in present-day Manhattan, has Robert Vaughn as a determined New York surgeon bringing "parts" home from work -- the hospital where he does experimental research -- to painstakingly rebuild the shattered body of an anonymous patient with organs from various donors.
Too Far to Go
Henry Mills
Love and passion, anger and heartbreak, laughter and happiness, all complex textures woven into the fabric so many have come to know as marriage. For behind the seemingly comfortable well-trimmed hedges of suburban Americana, live and often love, Richard and Joan Maple. Adapted from a series of stories appearing in the New Yorker Magazine over a period of twenty three years by Pulitzer Prize winning author John Updike ("The Witches of Eastwick", "Rabbit Run"), "Too Far To Go" garnered overwhelming critical praise in its theatrical debut. With its exceptional cast, this film envelops us in a poignant, sometimes funny, sometimes exasperating journey through this most important relationship.
Oliver's Story
Dr. Dienhart
Oliver Barrett IV is emotionally devastated by the death of his wife Jenny, and, while he tries to lose himself in his work as a lawyer, the long hours don't ease his pain, especially when he finds that his leftist views conflict with those of the senior partners at the firm. Eventually, Oliver's inconsolable grief begins to alienate those around him, until he finds new love with Marcie Bonwit, the wealthy and beautiful heiress to the Bonwit Teller fortune. Despite his affection for her, Oliver finds it difficult to leave the memory of Jenny behind, which causes major problems in their relationship.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Larry Butler
After an encounter with UFOs, an electricity linesman feels undeniably drawn to an isolated area in the wilderness where something spectacular is about to happen.
The Front
Committee Chairman
A cashier poses as a writer for blacklisted talents to submit their work through, but the injustice around him pushes him to take a stand.
Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys
Pomeroy
In 1930s Alabama, nine young black men are accused of raping two white women. The judge in the case, unlike the rest of the town, comes to believe that the boys are innocent and, against all advice from his friends and family, sets them free, which turns the entire community against him.
Valley Forge
George Washington struggles to hold his army together at a critical point during the Revolutionary War.
The Stepford Wives
Ted Van Sant
Joanna Eberhart has come to the quaint little town of Stepford, Connecticut with her family, but soon discovers there lies a sinister truth in the all too perfect behavior of the female residents.
Man on a Swing
Pete Russell
A small-town police chief investigating a murder is offered help by a self-described psychic. However, when the chief discovers that the "psychic" is in possession of information known only to the police, he suspects that the man may be more involved in the case than he lets on.
Enemies
Nikolai
This powerful drama about the social ferment that culminated in the 1917 Russian Revolution is set on an estate in provincial Russia in 1905. In a sun-dappled garden, some factory owners and their wives discuss the unrest among the workers. Rather than submit to a strike, they decide to close down the factory. When an owner is slain in a scuffle with a workman, the ensuing investigation uncovers the socialist fervor that is sweeping the countryside. The play goes beyond depicting class struggle by keenly examining the gulfs between youth and old age, vision and shortsightedness, and conservatism versus change.
The Witches of Salem: The Horror and the Hope
A bizarre series of events focused on young women in the village of Salem causes paranoia in the late 1600s. It ends with the lynching of the accused and subsequent releases from jail. Dark and gritty, but not frightening.
Dirty Harry
Rothko
When a madman dubbed 'Scorpio' terrorizes San Francisco, hard-nosed cop, Harry Callahan – famous for his take-no-prisoners approach to law enforcement – is tasked with hunting down the psychopath. Harry eventually collars Scorpio in the process of rescuing a kidnap victim, only to see him walk on technicalities. Now, the maverick detective is determined to nail the maniac himself.