John Savage

Biography
John Savage is an American actor who, for about half-a-decade from the late 1970s through the early '80s, remained precariously balanced on the cusp of stardom before his career as a character lead eventually derailed after the failure of Maria's Lovers (1984) in 1984. Perhaps it was for the best, personally, as Savage devoted the rest of the decade to fighting apartheid in South Africa, a far worthier cause than the pursuit of movie stardom.

Born John Youngs on August 25, 1949 in Old Bethpage, New York, Savage first made a major splash on screen nearly 10 years after his 1969 B-movie, big-screen debut in The Master Beater (1969) with The Deer Hunter (1978) (1978), winner of the Best Picture Oscars in 1979, its impact on Hollywood and America in the late 1970s was enormous. The following year, Savage had leads in two more big pictures:Milos Forman's musical Hair (1979) and the film adaptation of Joseph Wambaugh's _Onion Field, The (1979).

Savage's appearance as the suicide-survivor in Richard Donner's Inside Moves (1980) was at least the third major Role for the actor. Then came "Maria's Lovers", with Nastassja Kinski and cinema legend Robert Mitchum. His career as a character lead was over, and by 1986, he was appearing in a supporting role to James Woods' Oscar-nominated lead in Oliver Stone's Salvador. By the end of the decade, when he appeared in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather: Part III (1990) sequel in place of Robert Duvall (who refused to appear in the picture in a salary dispute).