George Hamilton

George Hamilton Bio

George Stevens Hamilton (born August 12, 1939) is an American actor whose six-decade career has made him one of Hollywood’s most recognizable personalities. He first gained national attention with his debut performance in Crime and Punishment U.S.A. (1959), a role that earned him a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award nomination. Over the years, Hamilton has appeared in a wide range of projects, from beach-party comedies and period dramas to television variety shows and Broadway productions. He is perhaps best known today for his debonair style, his perpetual suntan, and a string of charismatic performances that have kept him on screen since the late 1950s.

Early Life and Background

George Stevens Hamilton was born on August 12, 1939, in Memphis, Tennessee, and spent his early years with his mother in Blytheville, Arkansas. In 1950, when he was still a child, his mother sent him to live with his father in the north. He attended Hawthorne School in Beverly Hills, California, and later briefly attended a progressive school in New York City before being sent to the Gulf Coast Military Academy in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Growing up between the American South, the West Coast, and the Northeast gave Hamilton an unusually broad sense of place at a young age. The frequent moves also exposed him to a variety of schools and communities, planting the seeds for the easy adaptability that would later become one of his trademarks as a performer. The instability of his early years, paired with the discipline of military academy life, helped shape a young man who could move comfortably between comedy, drama, and light romance on screen.

Path to Acting

Hamilton began his film career in 1958, just a year after finishing his schooling. His first roles were on television, with appearances in series such as The Veil, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, The Donna Reed Show, and Cimarron City. These early small-screen parts led directly to his feature debut, the lead in Crime and Punishment U.S.A. (1959), directed by Denis Sanders for TD Productions.

The performance immediately caught the attention of major studios. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) signed Hamilton and cast him in the melodrama Home from the Hill (1960) and the beach-party comedy Where the Boys Are (1960). He also appeared in All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960) alongside Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner. By the time he was twenty-one, Hamilton had gone from regional school plays to working opposite some of the biggest stars of his generation, an unusually fast trajectory for a young actor of the era.

George Hamilton Career

Early Career (1958–1968)

After the success of Crime and Punishment U.S.A., Hamilton became a reliable leading man for MGM throughout the early 1960s. He took on a range of roles, including the Italian husband in Light in the Piazza (1962) opposite Olivia de Havilland, an anti-war drama in The Victors (1963), and a turn as playwright Moss Hart in Act One (1963). He worked with directors of the caliber of Carl Foreman and Vincente Minnelli, and appeared opposite Lana Turner in By Love Possessed (1961) and with Brigitte Bardot in the international production Viva Maria! (1965).

He also began to test his talents in producing. In 1971 he produced and starred in Evel Knievel, a project he developed with screenwriter John Milius. The film helped establish Hamilton as more than just a hired leading man, showing he had ambitions behind the camera as well as in front of it. Through the late 1960s he balanced studio work with guest spots on popular television series such as Columbo, Police Story, and Roots.

Breakthrough (1979–1990)

Hamilton’s biggest commercial breakthrough came with Love at First Bite (1979), a horror-comedy in which he played Count Dracula pursuing a young Manhattan model portrayed by Susan Saint James. The film became a surprise hit, and Hamilton also served as executive producer. Riding that success, he produced and starred in Zorro, The Gay Blade (1981), a comedic take on the classic masked hero. Though Zorro did not match the box-office performance of Love at First Bite, it cemented Hamilton’s reputation as a comedic leading man willing to take creative risks.

In the mid-1980s, Hamilton joined the sixth season of Aaron Spelling’s prime-time serial Dynasty, reaching one of the largest television audiences of his career. A second major breakthrough came in 1990 when Francis Ford Coppola cast him as B. J. Harrison, the Corleone family’s lawyer, in The Godfather Part III. The role reintroduced Hamilton to a new generation of filmgoers and remains one of his most widely recognized dramatic performances.

Notable Works and Milestones

Across more than six decades, Hamilton’s most notable works include Crime and Punishment U.S.A. (1959), Home from the Hill (1960), Where the Boys Are (1960), Light in the Piazza (1962), Love at First Bite (1979), Zorro, The Gay Blade (1981), The Godfather Part III (1990), Casper Meets Wendy (1998), and the Broadway production of Chicago (2001–2007). He was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on August 12, 2009, and also received a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars in 1999. In a 2016 advertising campaign, he portrayed a deeply tanned Colonel Sanders for KFC, reprising the role in 2018 and on the daytime drama General Hospital.

George Hamilton Award Nominations

Hamilton has received several high-profile nominations across his career. For his debut in Crime and Punishment U.S.A. (1959), he was nominated for a BAFTA Award. He has also picked up additional BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations over the years, reflecting the wide respect he earned from both international and American industry voters for his early dramatic work and his later comedic turns.

George Hamilton Awards Won

Hamilton’s most prominent verified win is the Golden Globe Award he received for his performance in Crime and Punishment U.S.A. (1959). That early recognition helped launch his career and remains the cornerstone of his award history, complementing his long record of nominations and his Hollywood Walk of Fame star awarded in 2009.

George Hamilton Family

Hamilton was raised primarily by his mother in the American South before moving north to live with his father as a teenager. His father, also named George Hamilton, was an influential figure in his early life, and the 2009 comedy film My One and Only was loosely based on stories Hamilton told about his early years on the road with his mother and brother. Hamilton has spoken openly about the importance of family in shaping his outlook, even as his career took him across continents.

Hamilton and his former wife, actress Alana Stewart, share a son, Ashley Hamilton, who was born in 1974. Hamilton also has a second son, born in December 1999, with Kimberly Blackford, whom he dated from 1995 to 1999 after meeting her in Fort Lauderdale.

Personal Life

Hamilton was married to actress Alana Stewart from 1972 to 1975. Although their marriage ended in divorce, the two later reunited professionally to co-host the daytime talk show George & Alana in the mid-1990s, and again in 2015 as stars of the reality series Stewarts & Hamiltons. Earlier in his career, in 1966, he had a well-publicized relationship with Lynda Bird Johnson, daughter of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Beyond acting, Hamilton has built a recognizable personal brand around his distinctive tan. In the late 1980s he launched the George Hamilton Skin Care System and the George Hamilton Sun Care System, along with tanning salons and a line of cigars. A cigar lounge bearing his name opened at the New York, New York hotel in Las Vegas in the late 1990s. He continues to make public appearances and remains active in Hollywood more than sixty years after his film debut.