General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20265 min read

Fred Weller

Fred Weller (Frederick Weller) is an American stage, film, and television actor best known for playing Marshal Marshall Mann for five seasons on the USA Network series In Plain Sight.¹ Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, he built his career primarily in New York theater, appearing in eight Broadway plays and twelve Off-Broadway plays, and has won a Drama Desk Award and an Obie Award.¹

Key fact	Detail
Born	New Orleans, Louisiana; sources give 1966 (IMDb, TVInsider, Playbill) or 1970 (IBDB)²^•³
Signature TV role	Marshal Marshall Mann, In Plain Sight (USA Network), 5 seasons, 61 episodes, 2008–2012¹^•²
Broadway count	Major roles in 8 Broadway plays, including Take Me Out, Glengarry Glen Ross, Seascape, Mothers and Sons, and To Kill a Mockingbird¹^•³
Awards	Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Ensemble Performance, Glengarry Glen Ross (2005); Obie Award, Best Ensemble, Curtains; two further Drama Desk and two Lucille Lortel nominations³^•⁴
Notable films	Stonewall (1995), The Shape of Things, Coyote Ugly, BlacKkKlansman (2018)⁴
Other TV	HBO's Mosaic opposite Sharon Stone, directed by Steven Soderbergh; guest roles on Odd Mom Out and Banshee¹^•⁴
Training	Juilliard⁵

Early career in New York theater

Weller's first New York stage job was understudying four characters in John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation; near the end of the run he went on for everyone, according to a 2003 Playbill interview.⁵ IBDB credits him on that production as an understudy and replacement.³ In 1996, a week and a half before previews of Stephen Bill's Off-Broadway play Curtains, he took over for an actor who lost his voice; the production earned the cast a shared Obie Award.⁵^•⁴

His early Broadway roles came quickly: Villebosse in the Roundabout's 1996 revival of Jean Anouilh's The Rehearsal, then Leo Hubbard opposite Stockard Channing in the 1997 Lincoln Center revival of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes.⁵^•³

Breakthrough: Take Me Out

Weller originated the role of Shane Mungitt, a narrow-minded baseball pitcher, in Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out, which opened on Broadway on February 27, 2003 and ran to January 4, 2004.³ The play had started in London, moved Off-Broadway, and then to Broadway, a progression Weller described in interviews as "quite a wild ride."⁵^•⁶ He called Mungitt his most interesting role, saying he worked on the character's sympathetic side and his "intense, emotional need."⁵ He received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play for the performance.³

Two years later he starred as John Williamson in the 2005 Broadway revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, sharing the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance with the cast.³ A third Drama Desk nomination followed in 2007 for Some Men.³

Later stage work

Weller continued in high-profile revivals and new plays. He played Leslie in Edward Albee's Seascape on Broadway in 2005, a role that required him to perform as a lizard; he prepared by studying a garden-variety lizard during a vacation in South Carolina.³^•⁷ In 2014 he played Cal Porter in Terrence McNally's Mothers and Sons, and from 2018 to 2019 he played Bob Ewell in Aaron Sorkin's Broadway adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.³^•⁸

Off-Broadway, his credits include Fulfillment Center, Money Shot, Reasons to Be Happy (Lucille Lortel nomination), Some Men, Mother Courage, The Shape of Things (Lucille Lortel nomination, also London), The Country Club, and Plunge.⁴ He has also played leads in regional productions, including A View from the Bridge at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and the Kennedy Center.¹

Television and film

Weller's early screen work included guest appearances on I'll Fly Away and Law & Order, a role as Eliot Ness's supposed roommate in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, and a lead as Chicago cop Johnny Sandowski in the ABC series Missing Persons (1993–94), which did not find an audience.⁹ His feature debut was the lead in Stonewall (1995), a fictionalized account of the 1969 police raid on a Manhattan gay bar; later 1990s film roles were mostly small parts, including Basquiat (1996) and Armageddon (1998).⁹ His part in Coyote Ugly (2000) was cut from the film.⁹

Television brought his widest exposure. As Marshal Marshall Mann on In Plain Sight, a drama about the federal witness protection program, he appeared in 61 episodes from 2008 to 2012.² In interviews he described the character as unusually written for television, "a bad ass and a dork at the same time," and said the show's tone, drama with humor, felt closer to theater than to a standard procedural.¹⁰ He prepared for the role partly by talking with the show's technical advisor, a former head of the witness protection program.¹⁰

Later screen work includes the HBO miniseries Mosaic (2018), directed by Steven Soderbergh, in which he starred opposite Sharon Stone, and Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman (2018).¹^•⁴ His own website credits him with about 50 film and television projects, including portraying Brian Wilson in The Beach Boys: A Family Story.¹

Personal life

Weller met the actress Ali Marsh during the run of The Little Foxes, when her friend Jennifer Dundas introduced them; the two married.⁵ He is a cousin of the actor Peter Weller, their fathers being brothers.¹¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Screen people and creators › Screen actors of the Anglosphere and Europe › American actors: 1970s to 1990s › Surnames U to We

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 17, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 12, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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