Pruitt Taylor Vince

Pruitt Taylor Vince (born July 5, 1960) is an American character actor who has made many appearances in film and television.

Vince was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He attended Louisiana State University and began acting due to a mistake; a computer error in his high school registration scheduled him in an acting class.

Vince has a condition called nystagmus which is the involuntary movement of the eye.

Vince made his film debut in Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law, but his scenes wound up on the cutting room floor. He had prominent supporting roles in a number of major films, including a turn as a dimwitted Ku Klux Klan member in Mississippi Burning, Lee Bowers in JFK, and the main character's best friend in Nobody's Fool. He also starred in Giuseppe Tornatore's Legend of 1900 alongside Tim Roth. He had his first lead role in James Mangold's independent film Heavy, playing a sweet, silent overweight cook harboring a crush on a waitress (Liv Tyler).

Vince often alternates roles of both heroic and villainous characters, like a lovable small town pub owner in Beautiful Girls, a serial killer with multiple personalities in Identity (a second collaboration with director Mangold), the disheveled gossip columnist in Simone, and a pompous sheriff in Nurse Betty. He can also be seen in Love from Ground Zero as Walter. Vince also played a Southern cop in Angel Heart, a kidnapper's assistant in Trapped, and a deputy prison warden in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers.

Other film titles include the neo-noir China Moon and the psychological horror film Jacob's Ladder.

Guest appearances on TV shows include Deadwood, Alias, The X-Files, Miami Vice, Quantum Leap, Chicago Hope, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Highlander: The Series, and the American remake of Touching Evil. In 2011 he appeared as Otis in the AMC television series The Walking Dead. He also had a guest role playing a 600-lb. patient in Fox's medical drama House. From 2010 to 2014 he had a multi-episode appearance in The Mentalist. In 2012, he appeared in a full episode of Justified. He took a comic role as "Jelly" in Flypaper.

Vince received an Emmy Award in 1997 for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his role as serial killer Clifford Banks during the second season of the television series Murder One.