Alfred Molina Bio

Alfred Molina was born in London on May 24, 1953.His mother, Giovanna, was an Italian house-keeper who cleaned rooms in a hotel and worked as a cook. His father, Esteban, was a Spanish immigrant from Madrid who worked as a waiter and chauffeur. He decided to become an actor after seeing Spartacus at the age of nine. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and later HB Studio in Greenwich Village in New York City. His stage work includes two major Royal National Theatre productions, Tennessee Williams' "The Night of the Iguana" and David Mamet's "Speed the Plow" and also debuted on Broadway in Yasmina Reza's "Art", for which he received a Tony Award nomination in 1998. He is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and made his cinematic debut in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) He then landed many supporting roles in movies like Mike Leigh's Meantime (1981), Peter Yates's Eleni (1985) , Richard Donner's Ladyhawke (1985) and Dusan Makavejev's Manifesto (1989), to name a few. Molina spent the next several years appearing in a number of films, like An Education, as well as various TV projects like Law & Order: L.A., and Roger & Val Have Just Got In.
In the coming years, Alfred Molina portrayed kinder roles and really took advantage of his mixed heritage. In The Perez Family (1995), Molina plays a Cuban immigrant struggling to make a new life for himself in Miami. In Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights, Molina called to mind and gave us a deranged playboy teetering on the edge of insanity - a role that is a really good example of his unique versatility. In 2000's Chocolat he was cast as the narrow-minded mayor of a small French town circa 1950s, who tries to shut down a chocolate shop. In 2002's Frida, Molina earned a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for his portrayal of Diego Rivera. In 2004, he blew everybody away as the infamous villain Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2. His portrayal of the maniacal comic-book