Arliss Howard

Howard was born in Independence, Missouri. He received an English literature degree from Columbia College. He worked in the Wyoming oil industry, on a New Mexico ranch, and lived in Hawaii.

Howard appeared in supporting roles for films including Full Metal Jacket (1987), Tequila Sunrise (1988), Men Don't Leave (1990), Ruby (1992), The Sandlot (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994), and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995). He was nominated for two CableACE Awards for his roles in the television films Somebody Has to Shoot the Picture and The Man Who Captured Eichmann, winning for the former.

In 1997, Howard portrayed billionaire John Hammond's evil nephew Peter Ludlow in the film The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and U.S. Vice President John C. Calhoun in the film Amistad. Both films were directed by Steven Spielberg.

Howard has had a recurring role in the NBC weekly drama thriller series Medium and has directed several episodes. He also starred in and directed the films Big Bad Love (2001) and Dawn Anna (2005), both co-written with James Howard, his brother. Howard's wife, Debra Winger, starred in both films. In 2009, Howard starred in the science fiction drama film The Time Traveler's Wife. In 2010, he played Kale Ingram, a benignly duplicitous supervisor at an American intelligence agency, in the TV series Rubicon, which was canceled by AMC after 13 episodes. The following year, Howard appeared in the feature Moneyball.

Howard has extensive stage credits, including a role in the 2009 revival of August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone on Broadway. He has appeared in several productions at the American Repertory Theater (ART) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, including Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, with Winger, and Bertolt Brecht's In the Jungle of the Cities, directed by Robert Woodruff. Howard was also seen as Mikhail Lvovich Astrov in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, and Nikolai Ivanov in Chekhov's Ivanov, with Winger playing the role of Anna.

Howard joined the cast of a CBS political drama pilot titled Ways & Means with Patrick Dempsey in June 2020. That same year, he starred in the film Mank.

Howard is married to actress Debra Winger. He has two sons.