Chris Pedersen (actor)

Chris Pedersen (born 1963) played the character "Jack Diddley" in the cult Penelope Spheeris produced film Suburbia about punk rockers in L.A. He also appeared in the Oliver Stone Oscar winning film Platoon, and in other cult films such as Night of the Comet and Point Break among others. In 1981 Chris briefly played guitar for the punk rock band SIN 34.

Pedersen was never formally trained as an actor, instead was approached by director Penelope Spheeris at a park in Burbank, CA where the band TSOL was playing. According to Pedersen who was an unemployed aerospace worker at the time "I was thinking 'yeah, right' and didn't pay any attention to her until she said it paid $100 a day, which at the time was a lot of money. So I showed up for the audition on time and tried really hard not to screw it up. That was the start of my acting career."

He began to distance himself from the film industry in the early 1990s focusing instead on cars and technology. He had a brief racing history competing in weekly NASCAR events at Saugus speedway 1992-1995 and also Irwindale speedway in 2000 in the Los Angeles area. He was the team leader and founding member for the DARPA Grand Challenge team "AI Motorvators". The self funded team entered the V-8 powered "IT Came From The Garage" which finished in the semi-finals in 2004 and 2005. The Discovery Channel TV show "Monster Garage" did an episode of "Backyard Monsters" on the AI Motorvators in 2005 featuring Pedersen and the team competing in the 2005 Grand Challenge.

Chris was born in San Francisco, CA and grew up in Southern California.