Guttenberg played Pecos Bill in an episode of Tall Tales & Legends, then was in Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986). A comedy in which he starred, Bad Medicine (1985), was not particularly successful. Guttenberg then had the romantic male lead in Cocoon (1985), another box-office success. Police Academy was quickly followed by a sequel, Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985). He then became a busy star over the next four years, appearing in nine starring roles, tying with Gene Hackman for busiest actor. It grossed $8.5 million in its opening weekend and over $149 million worldwide, against a budget of $4.5 million, and out of the film franchise it launched it is the most successful. In 1984, Guttenberg played the lead role in Police Academy.
Guttenberg starred in The Ferret (1984) a pilot for a TV series that was not picked up.
He starred in the action-comedy The Man Who Wasn't There (1983) and had a supporting part in the post-apocalyptic television movie The Day After (1983). He appeared in Barry Levinson's Diner (1982), then starred in another short-lived TV series No Soap, Radio (1982). Guttenberg played Jim Craig in the TV movie Miracle on Ice (1981). The same year, he starred in the Nancy Walker-directed Can't Stop the Music, a semiautobiographical movie about the disco group Village People. Guttenberg starred in the TV movie To Race the Wind (1980) playing blind lawyer Harold Krents. In 1980, a Coca-Cola commercial featured him trying to help a non-English-speaking woman whose car stalled. He had a supporting role in the tennis romance film Players (1979). Guttenberg starred in the short-lived TV series Billy (1979), based on Billy Liar. He also appeared in the 1978 film The Boys From Brazil, based on the Ira Levin bestseller, and guest-starred on Family. He then played the starring role in the 1977 California high-school comedy The Chicken Chronicles, set in Beverly Hills in 1969. As Guttenberg recounts, within weeks he was cast in a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial playing opposite Colonel Sanders.Ĭareer 1977 to 1984: Early roles to breakthrough Īfter playing an uncredited bit part in Rollercoaster, Guttenberg had his first screen credit in the TV movie Something for Joey (1977). He moved to California to pursue an acting career. Īfter his high school graduation, he attended the State University of New York at Albany for a year. During high school, he attended a summer program at the Juilliard School where he studied under John Houseman, and he won a role in an off-Broadway production of The Lion in Winter. He had a Jewish upbringing in the Flushing neighborhood of the borough of Queens before his family moved to North Massapequa, New York, where he graduated from Plainedge High School in 1976. Guttenberg was born on August 24, 1958, in Brooklyn, New York, the only son, along with his two sisters, of Ann Iris (née Newman), a surgical assistant, and Jerome Stanley Guttenberg, an electrical engineer. 2.1 1977 to 1984: Early roles to breakthrough.