Josef Sommer

Josef Sommer is a classically trained stage actor who has also been a prolific performer in films. He made his debut at the age of nine in a production of "Watch on the Rhine" with the Carolina Playmakers in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He trained as an actor at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut. He performed with the Seattle Repertory Theater and made his Broadway debut in 1970.

Sommer made his film debut in Don Siegel's classic Dirty Harry (1971) and also appeared in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

Appears with Michael Murphy in The Front (1976) and 30 years later in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006).

He was awarded the 1980 Outstanding Performance for "The Lady and the Clarinet" at the Mark Taper Forum Theatre in Los Angeles, California.

In 1982, appeared in two films with Meryl Streep: sharing scenes with her in Still of the Night (1982) and narrating her character story in Sophie's Choice (1982). The following year they co-starred in Silkwood (1983).

He has played 3 different historical American presidents; Gerald Ford in The Betty Ford Story (1987), Franklin D. Roosevelt in The Kennedys of Massachusetts (1990), Woodrow Wilson in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles - Paris, May 1919 (1993) as well as 1 fictional president in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006).

He appeared with three of the five actors who played Jack Ryan (as of 2019): Harrison Ford in Witness (1985); Alec Baldwin in Malice (1993) and Ben Affleck in The Sum of All Fears (2002) - the latter being a film from the Ryan franchise.