Fisher Stevens was born Steven Fisher in Chicago, the son of Sally, a painter and AIDS activist, and Norman Fisher, a furniture executive. Stevens grew up in the Chicago, Illinois area, living in Hyde Park, Highland Park, and Evanston and describes himself as a "white Jewish kid from Chicago." His parents divorced when he was 13, after which he moved to New York with his mother. In the past, Stevens battled with Hodgkin's disease. At age 16, Stevens landed his first movie role, acting in the horror filmThe Burning. He completed one year at New York University before deciding to pursue acting full time.
Career
He co-founded the Naked Angels Theater Company with longtime friends Rob Morrow, Nicole Burdette, Pippin Parker, Charles Landry, Nancy Travis and Ned Eisenberg in 1986. He also co-founded Greene Street Films, a film-production company located in Tribeca, New York City, in 1996. Stevens performed as Edgar Allan Poe on Lou Reed's album The Raven in 2003. He is an accomplished harmonica player. As an actor, he is known for his roles as Chuck Fishman on Early Edition, Seamus O'Neill on Key West, Eugene "The Plague" Belford in Hackers, Iggy in Super Mario Bros., Hawk Ganz in The Flamingo Kid, and his role as Ben Jabituya/Jahveri in Short Circuit and Short Circuit 2, respectively. His television credits include Columbo, Frasier, Friends, Law & Order, Key West, Damages, and Lost. He appeared on two episodes of the television series Numb3rs. Fisher also has a Broadway and off-Broadway career spanning nearly three decades. He played Jigger Craigin in the 1994 Lincoln Center revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel. He had an early success in the 1982 Broadway production of Torch Song Trilogy playing David, the adopted son of the gay protagonist played by the show's writer Harvey Fierstein, and the original Broadway production of Brighton Beach Memoirs, where he succeeded Matthew Broderick in the starring role of Eugene. Throughout his career, he has acted in and directed more than 50 stage productions. In 2010, Fisher co-founded a new media and documentary film company, Insurgent Media, with Andrew Karsch and Erik H. Gordon. In June 2010, Stevens made his major theatrical directing debut with John Leguizamo's one-man show, Ghetto Klown, which eventually ran on Broadway from March to July 2011. The two had appeared together in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at The Public Theater about 20 years earlier. On July 13, 2012, PBS debuted Tales From a Ghetto Klown, a documentary about the development of the show which prominently features Stevens. In 2010, Stevens won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for co-producing The Cove. He directed the 2012 crime story Stand Up Guys, starring Al Pacino and Christopher Walken. He teamed up with Alexis Bloom to direct the film , which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016.
