Peter Weller

Weller trained extensively in New York theater and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts before working steadily in film through the late 1970s and early 80s, developing a reputation as a serious, technically precise actor well before RoboCop.

A trained stage actor who performed most of RoboCop with only his jaw visible, he still made a corporate product grieve for the man inside. He studied mime and movement specifically to communicate emotion through the suit's limited range of motion, since the heavy costume restricted nearly all of his normal facial and body acting tools.

He holds a genuine graduate degree in Italian Renaissance art history, a detail that surprises most people familiar only with his action-hero roles, and later became a college professor of art history alongside his continued acting career — an unusually academic parallel path for a genre lead.