Scott Bakula

Bakula was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Sally (Zumwinkel) and Joseph Stewart Bakula (1928–2014), a lawyer.

He has a younger brother and a younger sister.

The family surname comes from Czech and Slovak ancestry, translating literally to "stick" (spelled bakuľa).

He attended Jefferson College, followed by the University of Kansas for a time, but left, saying:

"...because I was offered a tour of Godspell, a national tour that was from St. Louis. I thought that sounded great, and I went to my parents and I said "I want to do this tour", and they said, "Go ahead, maybe it will get it out of your system.

And you come back to school in a year or two, you come back." The tour was gonna start in August and the tour never started and school did, and then the tour fell apart, and there I was sitting at home. So I was left holding the bag, basically, and then had to decide where to go from there. And I applied, was applying to other schools. I was gonna go to a Mormon theatrical kind of school, and the more I looked at it the more I spent time examining the school side of it. I just realized what I really needed to do was just pick up, pack up and go to New York."

Scott Stewart Bakula (born October 9, 1954) is an American actor.

He is known for his roles in two science-fiction television series: as Sam Beckett on Quantum Leap – for which he was nominated for four Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards (winning one) – and as Captain Jonathan Archer on Star Trek: Enterprise.

Bakula moved to New York City in 1976.

Bakula starred in the musical Shenandoah, a play which also provided his first professional theatrical role in 1976, at Ford's Theatre, in 2006.

Bakula is heard singing "Pig Island" on Sandra Boynton's children's CD Philadelphia Chickens, which is labeled as being "For all ages except 43."

Scott Bakula said that he might be starring as Sam in a Quantum Leap film as stated in TV Guide Magazine along with Dean Stockwell.

He made his professional debut in the 1977 national tour of the musical Shenandoah.

He made his Broadway debut in 1982 as an understudy in the short-lived musical Is There Life After High School? The following year, he appeared as baseball legend Joe DiMaggio in Marilyn: An American Fable, which only ran 17 performances.

He received a shared Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Ensemble Acting for his performance in the 1985 Off-Broadway production of Three Guys Naked from the Waist Down; he would later appear in its Pasadena Playhouse production.

The success of Three Guys Off-Broadway brought him attention, and when his next show, the musical Nightclub Confidential, which co-starred his wife Krista Neumann, moved to Los Angeles, he moved there at the urging of his California agent, Maggie Henderson, and his New York agent, Jerry Hogan.

"I call [Henderson] up and said I got a show, I'm gonna be out there, I'm coming out in January. So it'll work out because it's time for pilot season and I'll be doing something so people can come and see me. ... And then I coincidentally had done a Disney Sunday Night ABC movie that was gonna come out some time in the winter. It was the time to go. Came out here on New Year's Day, 1986. The show I did turned out to be a big hit out here. It got me a lot of attention out here and I jumped onto the TV sitcom Designing Women in the beginning and was able to do that pilot ... and things kind of took off."

He was cast in two short-lived series: Gung Ho and Eisenhower & Lutz.

During a Hollywood writers' strike in 1988, he returned to New York to star in Romance/Romance on Broadway, which ran from May 1, 1988, to January 15, 1989.

For his performance as Alfred Von Wilmers and Sam, he was nominated for the 1988 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

Afterward, he landed the lead role opposite co-star Dean Stockwell in the science fiction television series Quantum Leap (1989–1993).

Bakula played time traveler Dr. Sam Beckett, who was trapped by a malfunction of his time machine to correct things gone wrong in the past.

His performance in the show earned him a Golden Globe Award (along with three nominations) and four Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, as well as five consecutive Viewers for Quality Television Awards for Best Actor in a Quality Drama Series.

From 1993 to 1995, he played Peter Hunt, a reporter and occasional love interest on the sitcom Murphy Brown.

In 1995, Bakula appeared on the cover of Playgirl.

He played the titular Mr. Smith in the sole season of Mr. & Mrs. Smith in 1996.

He voiced Danny Cat in the animated film Cats Don't Dance (1997).

He played the aging veteran pitcher Gus Cantrell in Major League: Back to the Minors (1998), the final movie in the Major League trilogy.

He also played Jim Olmeyer, the same-sex partner of Sam Robards' Jim Berkley, in the film American Beauty (1999).

As Bakula recalled in 2000:

Bakula played Jonathan Archer, captain of Earth's first Warp 5 interstellar starship, on Star Trek: Enterprise from 2001 to 2005.

In 2006, he reprised the role of Archer for the Star Trek: Legacy PC and Xbox 360 video games as a voice-over.

Bakula performed various songs from his career for a one-night-only performance entitled An Evening with Scott Bakula at Sidney Harman Hall on January 18, 2008, as a benefit for the restoration of the historic Ford's Theater.

Bakula had three appearances in 2008.

He appeared as Atty. Jack Ross in an episode of Boston Legal, "Glow in the Dark", which aired on February 12, 2008, on the ABC network.

From March 4 – April 20, he starred as Tony Hunter in the world premiere of Dancing in the Dark at The Old Globe in San Diego, California.

At Comic Con 2010, he announced that a script was being worked on and that while he would be in the movie, he would not have the main role.

From 2014 to 2021, he portrayed Special Agent Dwayne Cassius "King" Pride on NCIS: New Orleans.

A Tony Award-nominee for his work on Broadway, Bakula starred in the comedy-drama series Men of a Certain Age and guest-starred in the second and third seasons of NBC's Chuck as the title character's father, Stephen J. Bartowski.

From 2014 to 2015, he played entrepreneur Lynn on the HBO show Looking.