Thanks to Golden Globe and Emmy-nominated performances for his television work, quirky actor Lee Pace had little trouble becoming a known commodity in short order. Ever since his breakout performance in “Soldier’s Girl” (Showtime, 2002-03), Pace was on the fast track to television stardom, though success in features remained tougher to come by. But it was his leading role on the whimsical hit dramedy, “Pushing Daisies” (ABC, 2007-09) that put the handsome Pace on the map, providing good footing to take the next large leap in his career.
Born on Mar. 25, 1979, in Chickasha, OK, Pace spent a small portion of his youth growing up in Saudi Arabia, where his father worked for an oil company. Back in Houston, TX, Pace developed a taste for acting when he joined the Alley Theatre, a move that led him to temporarily quit high school. After performing in a few productions, Pace returned to high school to graduate, before attending the prestigious Juilliard School to study drama, where he essayed several Shakespearean roles, including Romeo in “Romeo and Juliette,” the titular villain of “Richard III,” and the traitorous general Cassius in Julius Caesar.” He left Juilliard with his degree and continued acting on the stage, most notably off-Broadway in Craig Lucas’ “Small Tragedy,” which earned the young actor a nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor at the 2004 Lucille Lotel Awards. Meanwhile, he made his small screen debut with a guest starring role on the eternal “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (NBC, 1999- ).
Pace rose to prominence with his Golden Globe-nominated turn in “Soldier’s Girl” as a transgender entertainer whose relationship with a G.I. (Troy Garity) leads to the soldier’s brutal murder at the hands of a fellow infantryman. The role also earned him a nomination for Best Male Lead at the Independent Spirit Awards in 2004. Pace landed his first regular series role in the ultimately short-lived “Wonderfalls” (Fox, 2003-04), playing the scholarly brother of a Niagara Falls souvenir shop employee (Caroline Dhavernas) recovering from a nervous breakdown who suddenly starts believing that the store’s inanimate objects are delivering her cryptic messages.
Making his debut in features, Pace had a small role in the romantic drama “White Countess” (2005), before making a more substantial impact in “Infamous” (2006), playing Dick Hickok, one of the drifters who killed the Clutter family in rural Kansas, leading to Truman Capote’s (Toby Jones) famed novel, In Cold Blood. After a small part in Robert De Niro’s middling CIA yarn, “The Good Shepherd” (2006), Pace returned to regular series television, landing the lead role in the endearingly quirky “Pushing Daisies," a supernatural fantasy about a man (Pace) with the power to bring the dead back to life with a touch, only to send them to permanent death if he touches them again – all to collect the reward for any information on the person’s death. Pace’s performance earned the actor a nod at the 2008 Golden Globes for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Comedy or Musical and an Emmy nomination later that same year for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.