Holt McCallany won rave reviews for his portrayal of a boxer with pugilistic dementia in the FX series LIGHTS OUT. He’ll be seen next in the much anticipated period crime story GANGSTER SQUAD opposite Sean Penn and the action films HIJACKED with UFC champion Randy Couture, and BULLET TO THE HEAD with Sylvester Stallone. Holt also has the lead in a futuristic version of Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick titled WHITE SPACE, and he costars in a new police drama for CBS called GOLDEN BOY.

Holt was born in New York City into a theatrical family. His mother was a legendary cabaret singer who began her career as Miss Nebraska. His father was a Tony award-winning Broadway producer. He began school in Dublin, Ireland at the age of five, but returned to the United States following his parent’s divorce. When he was fourteen he ran away from home and took a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of becoming an actor, but his parents tracked him down and sent him back to Ireland to the boarding school his father had attended forty years earlier, Newbridge College, County Kildare.

Holt soon left Ireland and eventually graduated from Creighton Preparatory school, then went to France to continue his education. He learned French at the Sorbonne, studied art history at the Paris American Academy, and theater at L’Ecole Marceau and L’Ecole Jacques Le Coq. He spent a summer studying Shakespeare in Oxford, and went with a production of Twelfth Night to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland before moving to New York City permanently to begin his acting career.