Born in Malibu, Timothy Hutton was primarily raised in Berkeley, CA by his mother and his father, actor Jim Hutton. Given plenty of opportunity to act, Hutton was cast in a number of his father's projects, including NEVER TOO LATE (1965) and a stage production of Harvey. Young Hutton also gained early acting experience playing Dionysus in a high school production of Euripedes' The Bacchae.
Hutton spent his early years appearing in television movies such as AND BABY MAKES SIX (1979) and the hard-hitting FRIENDLY FIRE (1979). It wasn't until Robert Redford's ORDINARY PEOPLE (1980) that people really began to take notice of the young actor. In part, the realism of Hutton's wrenching portrayal of the anguished teen who blames himself for his brother's death was fueled by his grief over his father's recent death from cancer. The performance thrilled the critics and he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in both the New York Film Critics Awards and the Academy Awards. Although he didn't win the former, he still holds the record for the youngest actor to win the Oscar in that category.
The win led critics to tout Hutton as the brightest of the '80s "Brat Pack" and to predict a major career for him. But despite his early promise, Hutton remained a well-respected but not terribly high-ranking star. He preferred to be cast in more independent films and play smaller roles and deeper characters.
He spent the rest of the decade and most of the 1990s playing sensitive characters in offbeat, intellectually oriented films, though he also occasionally got to play villains such as the mobster Ray Blossom in PLAYING GOD (1997).
In 2006, he starred along side Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, and Alec Baldwin in Robert DeNiro's THE GOOD SHEPHERD and in 2007 will be seen in LYMELIFE, with Alec Baldwin and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Hutton has been married to children's book illustrator Aurore Giscard d'Estaing since 2000.
