John Victor Shea III (/ʃeɪ/ SHAY;[2] born April 14, 1949)[3] is an American actor, film producer, and stage director.

Shortly after his Off-Broadway career began, Lee Strasberg invited Shea to join the Actors Studio where he spent several years studying method acting.

Shea was born in North Conway, New Hampshire, near where his father was teaching at Fryeburg Academy, Maine, and was raised in the Sixteen Acres area of Springfield, Massachusetts, with four siblings.

His parents were Elizabeth Mary (née Fuller) and Dr. John Victor Shea, Jr.,[5] who served in the U.S. Army during World War II, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, and who became a teacher, coach and later assistant Superintendent of Schools.

After seeing his performance Lee Strasberg invited Shea to join the Actors Studio where he spent several years studying method acting.

In 1977, during his first trip to Los Angeles to get experience in front of a camera, he played guest roles in such TV series as Eight Is Enough and Man from Atlantis, and co-starred in The Last Convertible, a miniseries for Universal.

He made his television film debut as Joseph in The Nativity (1978) opposite Madeleine Stowe as Mary, a biblical epic shot in Spain.

[9] During the early 1980s, Shea was asked to join the billed cast of Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize winning How I Learned to Drive along with Molly Ringwald as well as the following: Anne Meara's Down the Garden Paths, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, the original production of A. R. Gurney's The Dining Room, Peter Parnell's The Sorrows of Stephen, Stephen Poliakoff's American Days, Theodore Mann's production of Romeo and Juliet, Philip Barry's The Animal Kingdom opposite Sigourney Weaver.

Shea went on to be cast in the title role in Nancy Hasty's The Director, and, later, in Israel Horovitz's The Secret of Madame Bonnard's Bath.

[11] This rally was the subject of the 1984 documentary film In Our Hands by Robert Richer and Stan Warnow, in which Shea made a cameo appearance.

[12] Shea made his Carnegie Hall debut playing "The Soldier" in Tom O'Horgan's 1985 production of Igor Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat, with Pinchas Zukerman and Andre de Shields.

In 1986, he made his London West End debut starring in Joseph Papp's production of Larry Kramer's drama The Normal Heart at the Albery Theatre.

[14] His portrayal of William "Bill" Stern received critical acclaim and resulted in him being nominated and winning his first Emmy Award for Supporting Drama Actor.

In Grant Tinker's 1990 CBS series WIOU, written by John Eisendrath and Kathryn Pratt, Shea led an ensemble cast briefly before the show's cancellation.

In 1998 Shea co-wrote and directed the independent film Southie, starring Donnie Wahlberg, Rose McGowan, Amanda Peet, Anne Meara, Will Arnett and Lawrence Tierney.

His reading of Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" won AudioFile Magazine's Earphones Award in 1999, as part of the anthology Selected Shorts: Classic Tales, Vol.

[40] Later that year, he wrote and directed Grey Lady, a romantic thriller set on Nantucket, starring Eric Dane, Natalie Zea, Adrian Lester, Carolyn Stotesbury, Chris Meyer, and Amy Madigan.

[45] According to IMDB, Shea has been in a total of 81 movies as an actor, has written, and directed two screenplays that have turned into film (Grey Lady and Southie), and has served as an associate producer on Achchamundu!