JOHN P. CONNOLLY MFA '79

JOHN P. CONNOLLY has enjoyed a successful 40-year career as a professional actor on stage, screen, radio and recordings. Mr. Connolly has also distinguished himself as a trade union leader in the arts, entertainment and media industry, serving as international president of AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), AFL-CIO; as national executive director of the Actors’ Equity Association; and on the General Board of the AFL-CIO. He has also served as vice president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the New York State AFL- CIO, the Department for Professional Employees of the AFL-CIO and on the National Board of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). For a decade he served as a key North American leader of FIA (Fédération Internationale des Acteurs).

Mr. Connolly’s leadership set the stage for the historic 2012 merger of the world’s two largest and most powerful performers’ unions to create SAG-AFTRA, representing more than 165,000 professional performers, broadcasters and recording artists. In September 2013 he served as delegate to the founding convention of the new union. In 2011 Mr. Connolly was awarded the AFTRA George Heller Memorial Gold Card, the union’s highest honor.

Beginning in university theater performing as Hamlet in 1971, Mr. Connolly went on to appear in leading roles in some 200 stage productions from Broadway to LA, portraying a wide array of characters from the Lion in The Wizard of Oz, to Matt Kelley, the Everyman of The West Wing, to Winston Churchill in Only a Kingdom. He starred in Billy Crystal’s Sessions for HBO and as Jake Miller in the groundbreaking Steven Bochco series Cop Rock for ABC.

Mr. Connolly attended LaSalle University and earned his MFA in theater from Temple University, where he serves on the Board of Visitors of the Center for the Performing and Cinematic Arts. He’s a guest lecturer and board member of Temple’s LA Study Away at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood.

Mr. Connolly and his wife, veteran casting director Bronni Stein, live in Los Angeles and New York City. School of Theater, Film and Media Arts and Theater, Film of School