Casper Van Dien is an American actor and producer who made his name by playing Johnny Rico, the star of 1997’s Starship Troopers, a cult classic sci-fi action movie widely considered to be one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made. He reprised the role in two of the film’s sequels: 2008’s Marauder and 2017’s Traitor of Mars. But Van Dien has also won awards for his acting in films such as Daughter, Patient Killer, Mad Heidi, One Nation Under God, and Grit. His major television roles include playing Harold Adams in The CW’s All-American and Andre Forester in Watch Over Me. His most recent work includes parts in Salvage Marines and Stripped.

Van Dien was born in Florida into a family with a military tradition. But Van Dien decided to act and moved to Los Angeles where he gradually established himself thanks to small roles in film and television. In the early 1990s, he started to become familiar thanks to roles in hit shows of the day such as Beverly Hills 90210 and One Life to Live. He also got the enviable role of playing the lead role in a James Dean biopic. In 1997, he starred in Starship Troopers, which was misunderstood and mismarketed as a straight sci-fi action film, not the satire it was intended to be. Seen as intended, it has rightly become regarded as one of the greatest films of its time — of any time. Back in 1997, despite the misunderstanding, Van Diem was subsequently cast in films such as Tarzan and the Lost City and Tim Burton’s classic interpretation of Sleepy Hollow.