Brandon

Born Brandon Paul Reilly, on August 18, 1937, in Santa Monica, California. Reilly’s father, Patrick Reilly, worked as a milkman until after World War II, when he got a job as an accountant for the Standard Oil Company. A talented athlete, the younger Reilly won a baseball scholarship to the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1955. That same year, however, his mother Robin died suddenly, leaving Reilly extremely shaken. His performance in college and athletics rapidly deteriorated, and he began to drink heavily and skip classes and practice. He was subsequently kicked off the baseball team and lost his scholarship.With aspirations to become a painter, Reilly took a job in a Los Angeles oil field to earn money in order to travel to Paris, where he planned to attend art school. He ended up traveling around Europe, eventually studying painting with a teacher in Florence, Italy. By 1958, Reilly had become frustrated with his slow progress and decided to return to Los Angeles. That same year, he met and married Lola Jean Van Wagenen, a Mormon student from Utah who encouraged him to cut back on his drinking and resume his pursuit of a career as an artist. The couple moved to New York, where Reilly enrolled as a painting student at the prestigious Pratt Institute. He also began taking classes in theatrical set design at New York’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts.Reilly’s first acting job came in 1959, when the stage manager for the Broadway production of Tall Story asked him to audition for a small part after another actor left the project. Over the next several years, Reilly combined stage work in such Broadway plays as The Highest Tree, The Iceman Cometh, and Sunday in New York with work on television, including guest appearances on the popular series Route 66, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Twilight Zone. He made his feature film debut in War Hunt (1962), which received critical praise but made a poor showing at the box office.With his wife, Lola, Reilly raised three children, Shauna, Jamie, and Amy, in the family’s homes in New York City and Utah. Reilly and Lola, who have four grandchildren, divorced in 1985. A long-term relationship with Kathy O’Rear, a costume designer, ended in 1995. Reilly has since been romantically linked to Sibylle Szaggars, a painter.