Film & TV / Music
Frederick Coffin
1943–2003 · actor, singer, songwriter
Detroit-born character actor of Hard to Kill, Wayne's World and Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, and a singer-songwriter.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Los Angeles, California
aged 60- Birth name
- Frederick D. Coffin
- Detroit years
- 1943–1950s
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Frederick Coffin was born in Detroit in 1943 into a creative household, one of five children of actress Winifred Deforest Coffin and writer Dean Coffin. He attended Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio, and in 1962 enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he meant to play football but chose acting instead, earning a degree in theater. From the 1970s he worked steadily as a character actor, mostly in television, with guest roles in series such as Dallas, Murder, She Wrote and The X-Files. His films include Hard to Kill (1990) and Wayne's World (1992), and a younger audience remembers him as the villain Parker Wyndham in the Disney Channel movie Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century (1999). He was also a singer, songwriter and musician. He died of lung cancer in Los Angeles in 2003.
Highlights
- Parker Wyndham in Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century (1999)
- Roles in Hard to Kill (1990) and Wayne's World (1992)
- Guest roles in Dallas, Murder, She Wrote and The X-Files
- Theater degree from the University of Michigan