Tom Noonan (born April 12, 1951) is an American actor, director, and screenwriter, best known for his roles as Francis Dolarhyde in Manhunter (1986), Frankenstein's Monster in The Monster Squad (1987), Cain in RoboCop 2 (1990), The Ripper in Last Action Hero (1993), Sammy Barnathan in Synecdoche, New York (2008), Reverend Nathaniel in Hell on Wheels (2011–2014), the Pallid Man in 12 Monkeys (2015–2018) and as the voice of everyone but the two main characters in Anomalisa (2015). Noonan is also a writer and director of theatre and film. His debut feature film What Happened Was (1994) won the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Early life Noonan was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, the son of Rita (McGannon), a mathematics teacher, and John Noonan Sr., a jazz musician and doctor of dental surgery. He had an older brother, John Ford Noonan, a playwright, and two sisters, Barbara and Nancy. Noonan was a very talented basketball player, and said "playing basketball is how I learned to perform in a lot of ways. It’s how I got interested in performing... I never acted as a kid. I never did school plays. I never acted until I was 27...you learn a lot when you’re in front of people and you’ve got a crowd going and you’re doing something that you love to do. A lot of the skills that you would need for acting come through that... It’s like a life and death struggle in front of people that you hope to impress." Career Noonan started working in theatre (appearing in the original Off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard's play Buried Child), but in the 1980s he began working in film. At tall, Noonan's imposing presence is probably responsible for his tendency to be cast as menacing villains, as in RoboCop 2, Last Action Hero, Manhunter, and The Pledge. His height was used for comic effect in "The Moving Finger," the series finale of the horror anthology Monsters (several episodes of which he also directed and wrote). In 1986, Noonan played Francis Dolarhyde, a serial killer who kills entire families, in Michael Mann's Manhunter, the first movie to feature Hannibal Lecter. Another supporting role, and another collaboration with director Michael Mann was in 1995, as Kelso in Heat. He also played the Frankenstein monster in The Monster Squad. During the 1990s, he wrote various plays, including two that