Biography

Born in Niskayuna (Schenectady county), New York, Eric Thal attended Haverford Preparatory School in Haverford, Pennsylvania where he was Student Council President. He then moved on to attend Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania where he majored in engineering. With the encouragement of his acting teacher Richard Brewer he left school after one year to pursue acting. At The Neighbourhood Playhouse Theatre he studied with Richard Pinter and studied classical theatre with Ada Brown Mather.

After working in commercials and as a magician in New York City, he auditioned for a small role in Sidney Lumet's film A Stranger Among Us (1992). Lumet was so impressed by the young actor, the director invited him back to audition for the leading role. Although he had virtually no professional credits, Thal landed the role of an Hasidic scholar who becomes involved with an undercover police officer (Melanie Griffith).

While the film failed to impress critics or the public, Thal's carefully measured intensity and equanimity were praised. He subsequently played a police officer (and the anti-heroine's husband) in the farcical The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag (1992) and followed up with a small role in Six Degrees of Separation (1993), as a man driven to suicide after an intimate encounter with a con artist (Will Smith).

Thal later co-starred as Donald Sutherland's disaffected son in The Puppet Masters (1994) and as a man who must face romance after the excitement has worn off in Joe's So Mean to Josephine (1996). He played the hirsute strongman in the TNT Biblical epic Samson and Delilah (1996), opposite Elizabeth Hurley. The following year, Thal was cast as a musician engaged to Halle Berry in the ABC TV-movie The Wedding (1998).

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tori Lyons