Happy Birthday James Marsden
James Paul Marsden was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma, the son of Kathleen and James Luther Marsden. His father, a professor of animal sciences and industry at Kansas State University, and his mother, a nutritionist, divorced when he was nine years old. His ancestry includes English, Scottish, German, and distant French. He has four siblings: two younger sisters, Jennifer and Elizabeth, and two brothers, Jeff and Robert. He attended Hefner Middle School and Putnam City North High School, in Oklahoma City, and later went on to attend Oklahoma State University, where he studied broadcast journalism. He was also a member of Delta Tau Delta fraternity. Marsden left after one and a half years, opting instead to move to Los Angeles in order to pursue his acting career.
Marsden married actress Mary Elizabeth Lisa Linde, on July 22, 2000. The couple have two children: son Jack Holden and daughter Mary James. However Linde filed for divorce on September 23, 2011. Marsden also has a son, William Luca Costa-Marsden, born on December 14, 2012, with former girlfriend Rose Costa.
Marsden got his first job on a series of episodes of The Nanny as Eddie, Margaret Sheffield’s boyfriend. Then he went on to star in the Canadian television series Boogies Diner, which aired for one season. With the end of that series, he guest starred on other television shows such as Saved by the Bell: The New Class and Party of Five and, later starred in the ABC show Second Noah. He also appeared in the television series Ally McBeal.
Marsden was cast as Cyclops in the X-Men films. Notably, Marsden also appeared in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. Singer dropped out of the third installment to direct Superman and Marsden was then cast as Lois Lane’s fiancé, Richard White. Following his successes in 2007’s Hairspray and Enchanted, Marsden played the male lead in the 2008 romantic comedy 27 Dresses opposite star Katherine Heigl. In 2009, Marsden also played the male lead in the film The Box, based on the 1970 short story Button, Button by author Richard Matheson, which was earlier made into an episode of The Twilight Zone. In 2012 and 2013, Marsden appeared in a recurring role in the sixth and seventh seasons of 30 Rock, playing Criss Chros, the boyfriend (and later husband) of the series’ main character, Liz Lemon.
Apart from being nominated in a number of shows and movies, he won the Album of the Year award in 2007 for Hairspray and Spotlight award in 2011
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