Warren Oates

Though he never quite reached the lead actor status he worked so relentlessly to achieve, Warren Oates (1928-1982) is known today as one of the most memorable and skilled character actors of the 1960s and 1970s. With his rugged looks and measured demeanor, Oates crafted complex characters that were at once brazen and thoughtful, wild and subdued. Warren Oates: A Wild Life is the first book-length look at the actor whom friends remember as a hard-living, hard-drinking man who was kind and caring, but also as mean as a blue-eyed devil. Born in the small town of Depoy in rural western Kentucky, Oates began his career in the late 1950s with bit parts in television westerns. During this time he met infamous director Sam Peckinpah, establishing a creative relationship and destructive friendship that would spawn some of Oates's most celebrated and unforgettable roles in films such as Ride the High Country (1962), The Wild Bunch (1969), and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). Parts in Major Dundee (1965), In the Heat of the Night (1967) Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Badlands (1973), and Stripes (1981) show Oates's penchant for working with seminal filmmakers -- directors as diverse and talented as Monte Hellman, Terrence Malick, Ivan Reitman, and Steven Spielberg. With remarkable range and depth he created colorful characters onscreen even as his life offscreen was full of drama, alcohol and drugs. With an engaging style and through careful research, author Susan Compo skillfully captures the nuances of Oates's life in the first biography of this beloved actor.

""A highly readable blow-by-blow of the actor's rocky and too-short life....The parts of Warren Oates' life are greater than its sum; he was not a visionary but a chameleon always searching for a new skin to inhabit. Behind the façade, Compo finds an ordinary human...."-- Los Angeles Times" -- , "" A Wild Life offers up ample anecdotes about the actor's antics."--Kelly Reichardt, Film Comment" -- , "" A Wild Life compresses a life's trajectory with a balance of tidiness and detours into some terrific anecdotes."-- Vue Weekly" -- , "" Warren Oates: A Wild Life benefits from terrific research by author Susan Compo. It reads not only as a sad tale of addiction but as a joyous celebration of a tortured artist, managing to describe the excess while still earning our sympathy for Oates and his demons. Additionally, fans who enjoy the films of the period from the 1950s until his death in 1983 will find some terrific anecdotes that will keep them reading late into the night."--Scott Coffman, courier-journal.com" -- , "" Warren Oates: A Wild Life tells an evocative story of a true maverick set against the background of one of the richest and most fascinating periods in American cinematic history. Susan Compo's passion for her subject is evident on every page. She displays a rare flair for the telling detail."--Eddi Fiegel, author of John Barry: A Sixties Theme" --

Susan Compo is a lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. She is the author of three works of fiction, including Pretty Things and Life After Death and Other Stori