Alex Winter
Alexander Ross Winter (born July 17, 1965)[1] is a British-American actor and filmmaker. He played the slacker Bill S. Preston Esq. in the 1989 film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and its sequels Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991) and Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020). He is also known for his role as Marko in the 1987 vampire film The Lost Boys; for co-writing, co-directing, and starring in the 1993 film Freaked;[2][3] and for directing documentaries in the 2010s.
For the Welsh television personality, see Alex Winters.
Alex Winter
British/American
Actor, filmmaker
1978–present
- Sonya Dawson
(m. 1995; div. ?)
3
Early life[edit]
Winter was born in London, England. His mother, Gregg Mayer, is a New York-born dancer who trained with Martha Graham, and founded the first modern-dance company in London in the mid-1960s. His father, Ross Albert Winter, is an Australian who danced with Winter's mother's troupe and co-founded the Mid American Dance Company in St. Louis.[4][5]
Winter received training in dance as a child. He has an older brother named Stephen. His father has English ancestry and his mother is Jewish, of Ukrainian Jewish descent.[6][7][8]
When Winter was five, his family moved to Missouri, where his father ran the Mid-American Dance Company (later, Modern American Dance Company[9]), while his mother taught dance at Washington University in St. Louis.[10][11] The two divorced in 1973.[12]
In 1978, Winter moved to the New York City area, where he and his mother lived in Montclair, New Jersey.[13] During this time Winter began performing as an actor on and off Broadway, commuting into New York City.[12] He reports his experience in New Jersey as being positive.[14]
In 1983, after graduating from Montclair High School, Winter was accepted into the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. While at NYU, he met fellow aspiring filmmaker Tom Stern.[15] The two collaborated on a number of 16 mm short films.[16]
Personal life[edit]
Winter was married to Sonya Dawson, with whom he had a son, born in 1998. The couple later divorced. In 2010, he married Ramsey Ann Naito. They have two children.[37]
Winter maintains dual British and American citizenship.[38]
On February 2, 2018, Winter revealed that he was molested by an older man at age 13 while acting on Broadway.[39] Winter refused to name his abuser, but revealed he is coping with PTSD since the incident, saying "I had extreme PTSD for many, many years, and that will wreak havoc on you."[40][33]