A veteran character actor known for sharing the screen with some of Hollywood’s biggest leading men of the 1980s and 1990s has been spotted in Los Angeles at the age of 78.
He started out as a young performer on stage, appearing in two musicals choreographed by Michael Bennett, the celebrated director and choreographer behind A Chorus Line.
His film career began in 1972 with a role in Clint Eastwood’s Western Joe Kidd, marking the start of a long and successful run in Hollywood supporting roles.
Over the years, he appeared alongside stars including Nicolas Cage, Kevin Costner, Leonardo DiCaprio, George Clooney and Dave Chappelle.
His wide-ranging credits include an Austin Powers film, Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia and Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed drama Killers of the Flower Moon.
So, can you identify the familiar Hollywood face?
The veteran character actor, who worked with many of the leading men of the 1980s and 1990s, was recently spotted in Los Angeles at 78
He was born in rural Colorado in 1948 after his pregnant mother survived a car crash that killed her cousin and triggered premature labor
His movie career began in 1972 when he appeared in Clint Eastwood’s Western Joe Kidd, launching decades of supporting roles in Hollywood
The actor is none other than Steve Eastin, who portrayed the ghost of disgraced Chicago White Sox star Eddie ‘Knuckles’ Cicotte in the 1989 baseball classic Field of Dreams.
Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, Field of Dreams starred Kevin Costner alongside James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster, Ray Liotta and Amy Madigan.
Audiences may also remember Eastin from Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, in which he played the Pan Am employee who tells Leonardo DiCaprio’s con artist character, Frank Abagnale Jr., about “some nut” known as “the Skywayman.” The mysterious figure, he explains, has been “flying around the country, posing as a Pan Am pilot” and has earned the nickname “the James Bond of the Sky.”
More recently, he featured as an auto worker laid off over video call in a climactic scene from Up in the Air, the 2009 recession dramedy starring George Clooney and Anna Kendrick.
‘It was a guy who made people feel like their own father had gotten fired,’ Eastin observed in an interview with Shock Cinema.
Ronald Steve Eastin was born in rural Colorado in 1948 after his pregnant mother survived a car accident that killed her cousin and sent her into premature labor.
He caught the acting bug young, training at a local theater from the age of six, and two years later he laid out his ambitions to his father.
‘I figured out what I want to do with my life. I want to be a major league baseball pitcher or a movie actor,’ he said, according to his autobiography Born in a Fatal Car Crash: …And Other Dramatic Entrances.
He is none other than Steve Eastin (left), who played the ghost of the scandalous Chicago White Sox star Eddie ‘Knuckles’ Cicotte in the 1989 baseball film Field of Dreams
Movie fans may also recognize him (right) from Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, led by Leonardo DiCaprio in the role of con man Frank Abagnale Jr
By 1972, the year he turned 24, he earned his Screen Actors Guild (SAG) card for an uncredited part in the western Joe Kidd, starring Clint Eastwood.
He jobbed around on hit shows like TJ Hooker, CHiPs and Little House on the Prairie and films like the 1985 release A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge.
In 1989, his notoriety was enhanced by his turn in Field of Dreams as the ghost of Eddie Cicotte, who chortles: ‘I’m melting, I’m melting,’ as he dematerializes.
The project held a particular significance to him insofar as his co-star Lancaster had been one of his inspirations to become an actor, thanks to films like Elmer Gantry and Come Back, Little Sheba, Eastin told The Renegade Rise Podcast.
Eastin later featured in the 1997 thriller Con Air, amid such names as Nicolas Cage, John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames and Mykelti Williamson.
He played a corrections officer aboard a plane being used for an inmate exchange that gets hijacked as part of the movie’s rollercoaster storyline.
His character clashed memorably with a criminal played by Dave Chappelle, with whom Eastin developed a warm offscreen rapport during the Utah shoot.
‘The very first day I got on location for Con Air, I walked into the lobby of the hotel in Park City and there was a tall, skinny African American kid standing there. And Park City is really white, so you could tell he was probably feeling like a stranger in a strange land,’ Eastin recalled years later.
Eastin (left) later featured in the 1997 thriller Con Air, amid such names as Nicolas Cage, John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames and Mykelti Williamson
‘So I walked over to him. I said: “Hey man! Are you doing the movie?” He said: “Yeah, I’m Dave Chappelle.” I said: “I’m Steve! Do you wanna come up to my room and smoke a joint?” He said: “Y-e-a-h!” Ha!’
They improvised the fan favorite exchange in which Eastin complains: ‘Oh, man, it smells like someone s*** in your mouth,’ and Chappelle replies: ‘He said he loved me.’
Eastin was able to bond with Cage during the two days they spent working together on the 2003 Ridley Scott crime comedy Matchstick Men.
At one point, Eastin informed Cage it was his daughter’s 18th birthday and asked the Oscar winner if he would agree to wish her.
That evening, Eastin and his daughter were at a food truck at the bottom of a hill while Cage was some distance up the slope, where he had just shot a scene.
‘He looks down and he walks all the way down the hill and says to my daughter: “Happy birthday, baby!” and he gives her a kiss. Then he ran back up the hill to his car,’ Eastin remembered. ‘I just thought that was a real class thing to do.’
Eastin’s roles included an umpire in the 1999 comedy Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and a detective in Brian De Palma’s 2006 The Black Dahlia, based on a James Ellroy novel about a still-unsolved Los Angeles murder from the 1940s.
More recently, fans could see him playing the real life John Calvin Pollock, a jurist presiding over a case involving the Osage murders, in Martin Scorsese’s 2023 period drama Killers of the Flower Moon starring DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.
For decades, Eastin has also worked as an acting coach whose students have included Michael Fishman, best known as DJ on Roseanne.
Eastin told Our News Outlet he is ‘continuing to work out of Los Angeles in film, television, commercials, music, and voice.’
He revealed he is ‘currently under consideration’ for a role in the revival of Matlock led by Kathy Bates, having guest-starred in the 1990s on the original series, which was led by television legend Andy Griffith as the titular attorney.
Eastin noted that his 2024 memoir Born in a Fatal Car Crash: …And Other Dramatic Entrances is available for purchase on Amazon.
