Ken Wahl - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

According to the New York Times, Wahl was born Anthony Calzaretta on October 31, 1954 in Chicago, Illinois. However, Wahl himself is elusive about his personal life. Entertainment Weekly wrote in 2004,

The mystery surrounding Wahl goes all the way back to the beginning. Ken Wahl was born in Chicago on... well, no one quite knows when Wahl was born. Some reports say Halloween 1954, others say Valentine's Day 1956, but these reports seem to be attempts by the actor to stymie curiosity seekers. "There's a reason for that," Wahl states cryptically, "but I'm not gonna get into why." Oh, one other thing: Ken Wahl is not actually Ken Wahl. At least he wasn't when he was born. While he declines to disclose his birth name, he does say that the moniker he's gone by for the past 25 years is the name of the person who saved his father's life in the Korean War.

According to his official biography, he was born "in a tiny apartment on the south side of Chicago, in the late fifties, when a young couple welcomed ... their third child, Kenny." In the late 1960s, it continues, his "family of 8" moved to the New York City borough of The Bronx, where he attended junior high and, for a time, high school. He played baseball, as a shortstop, in unspecified venues that might have included youth leagues and high school teams, before crashing a motorcycle and hurting his knee at age 16. He worked as a janitor while in high school and as a gas-station attendant at his family's service station. Leaving high shool, he left home, his bio says, "at the age of 18 ... in his ‘69 Dodge Dart" and crossed the United States working odd jobs. Eventually living in Los Angeles, he worked as an extra on movies including The Buddy Holly Story.

Wahl first gained recognition in 1979 when he was cast in the leading role of director Phil Kaufman's film The Wanderers. He was subsequently cast opposite Paul Newman in Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981), and went on to play the lead in movies including Race for the Yankee Zephyr (1981), The Soldier (1982), Jinxed (1982), Purple Hearts (1984) and other films. He then suffered another motorcycle crash, while on his way to meet with Diane Keaton about what eventually became the Mel Gibson role in Mrs. Soffel. Not wearing a helmet, Wahl was injured badly enough to require 89 stitches in his scalp.