John Shea was born April 14, 1949 in North Conway, New Hampshire. Shea is an Emmy award winning American actor who has starred on television and in film. He is best known for his role as Lex Luthor in the 1990s TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and also starred in the short lived 1990s TV series WIOU as Hank Zaret. Later on in the 2000s he starred on the syndicated TV series Mutant X as Adam Kane.
Shea has acted in such films such as Windy City (1984), Light Years (1988) as the voice of Sylvain, Freejack (1992), and Godless (2005), and he wrote and directed the award-winning independent film, Southie (1998) starring Amanda Peet, Donnie Wahlberg, Rose McGowan, Anne Meara, and Lawrence Tierney.
Shea has considerable stage experience on and off Broadway, starring in productions such as "Yentil", "How I Learned to Drive", "Down the Garden Paths", and the hit off-broadway play "The Director".
He has made guest appearances on TV shows, including Eight Is Enough, Barnaby Jones, Sex and the City, Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Medium, and he received an Emmy for his role in the TV movie Baby M.
John has been married twice. He and his first wife, Laura Pettibone, have one child together named Jake who is a student at the University of Miami studying business. He and his current wife, Melissa, have two children named Miranda and Caiden. He also has an abyssinian cat named Pharaoh.
Shea is a 1970 graduate of Bates College in Maine, where he was introduced to theater by a friend on the football team his freshman year. At Bates, Shea also gained national recognition on the debate team, including a victory over Harvard in 1970. He then attended the repudible Yale School of Drama at Yale University where he earned his MFA in directing.
