Joel Polis

Joel Polis is an actor who came to film, television and theater after a start in competitive gymnastics. A gymnastics scholarship brought him to the University of Southern California, where a freshman production of West Side Story turned him toward acting. A Summer Theater Festival scholarship then took him on a European tour through England, Germany and the Edinburgh Theater Festival. He later studied acting at NYU with the Broadway director Lloyd Richards and, after returning to Los Angeles, earned an MFA from Yale Drama School. His first screen role was Fuchs in John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). For television he played Gary on Cheers and appeared in series including Alien Nation, Northern Exposure, Seinfeld, Roseanne, Chicago Hope, Boston Legal, Star Trek: Voyager and CSI. His stage credits included the Pasadena Playhouse, Hartford Stage, South Coast Repertory, the Mark Taper Forum, the Old Globe Theater, the Odyssey Theatre and the Astor Place Theater.