Kenneth Todd Freeman (born July 9, 1965) is an American actor. He has been nominated for two Tony Awards over the course of his career and has won one Drama Desk Award, and one Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in performance. He has played supporting roles in films such as Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) and The Cider House Rules (1999), played a prominent recurring role as Mr. Trick on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1998–1999), and was a series regular as Mr. Poe on A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017–2019). He is an ensemble member at Steppenwolf Theatre Company and has appeared in many of their plays, and subsequent Broadway and Off-Broadway transfers, notably Airline Highway, Downstate, and The Song of Jacob Zulu, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
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Life and career
Born in Houston, Texas, Freeman went to the local High School for the Performing and Visual Arts before later graduating from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 1987.
Freeman has been an ensemble member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois since 1993. In the same year, he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his lead performance in the Apartheid drama The Song of Jacob Zulu. More recently, Freeman has played the role of Doctor Dillamond from Wicked in the first North American tour, Chicago and Broadway productions. In 2015, he was nominated for his second Tony Award, this time for Best Featured Actor in a Play as Sissy Na Na in Airline Highway. He won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play for the same role.
He has also had supporting roles in various films such as Eraser (1996), Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), The Cider House Rules (1999), and The Dark Knight (2008). On television, he earned a recurring role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Mr. Trick.
He performed in the Steppenwolf Theatre Company's production of Downstate, which concluded its run on November 18, 2018. It later transferred to Playwrights Horizon's and Freeman was nominated for his second Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play, and won an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in Performance for his role as Dee.
He portrayed Mr. Poe in the 2017 Netflix comedy drama series A Series of Unfortunate Events.