Date of Birth

20 December 1978, Fargo, North Dakota, USA

Birth Name

Charles Randolph Korsmo

Height

5' 8½" (1.74 m)

Mini Biography

Charles R. Korsmo is an Assistant Professor of Law and the U.S. director of the Canada-U.S. Law Institute at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, where he teaches courses in corporate law, corporate finance, and torts. Korsmo's articles have appeared in the William & Mary Law Review and Brooklyn Law Review, among others. His scholarship has been cited by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and in the New York Times.

Prior to joining the faculty at Case Western, Korsmo was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Brooklyn Law School. Korsmo clerked for the Honorable Ralph K. Winter on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and practiced in the New York offices of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. From 2001-2003, Korsmo worked at the Environmental Protection Agency and for the U.S House of Representatives as staff for the House Policy Committee and the Homeland Security Committee. In 2011, President Obama appointed Korsmo to the Board of Trustees of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. He holds a BS in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a JD from Yale Law School.

Trivia

• Raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
• Accepted a postion with the Missile Defense Team of the U.S. Government. [2000]
• Graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Class of 2000 with a degree in physics.
• Works as a special assistant with the EPA in Washington, D.C. [January 2002]
• He got involved in acting because he was bored in elementary school.
• He currently serves as Deputy Domestic Policy Analyst for the House Republican Policy Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.
• A member of the class of 2006 at the Yale University School of Law. Along with two other students, he received the William K.S. Wang prize, which is awarded to the "student or students demonstrating superior performance in the introductory corporate law course." [2005]
• Managed the Fighting Cox, the Congressional softball team sponsored Cox, in spring 2003.
• Has two brothers, John Edward "Ted" Korsmo II (born in 1976) and Joseph Ruf "Joe" Korsmo (born in 1983). Ted graduated from Breck School in Golden Valley, Minnesota in 1995, and then from New York University in 1999 with a BFA in Film/TV Production and Screenwriting. Joe graduated from Breck School in 2001, and then from The University of Pennsylvania in 2005 with a BA in Marketing.
• He held a 4.0 average in physics at M.I.T.
• Nowadays, he prefers to be called "Charles," not "Charlie."
• Parents are John, 51, chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board, and Deborah Ruf, 52, a Minneapolis educational consultant. [as of January 2002].
• While at Yale Law, he was a member of the Federalist Society, an organization for politically conservative law students.
• Fox studio was offering him $1 million to play the role of Mark Evans in The Good Son (1993) that went to Elijah Wood.
• Turned down the role of John Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) due to having prior obligations with What About Bob? (1991). The part went to newcomer Edward Furlong.
• When he chose to stop acting, a number of the roles that he turned down went to Elijah Wood.
• After completing Hook (1991) at the age of 13, Charlie made an active decision to stop acting as he craved a normal life away from fame and Hollywood pressures. He returned to acting seven years later for one final film Can't Hardly Wait (1998).
• Graduated from Yale Law School on May 31, 2006 with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree.
• His parents divorced in 1989. His attorney father, John, never remarried. His mother, Deborah Ruf, soon married Jim Wittman, an owner of a truck maintenance company. From his mother's remarriage, he now has four step-siblings.
• Graduated from Breck School in Golden Valley, Minnesota, in the Class of 1996.
• Cleveland, OH: Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law [August 2012]
• Korsmo was nominated for the Board of Trustees of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation by President Barack Obama. [2011]
• Attending Law School [March 2007]
• Visiting professor at Brooklyn Law School teaching Torts and Land Use Controls. [August 2009]
• Has stated that his performance in Dick Tracy (1990) is his personal favorite.
• Has a cameo in Forrest Gump (1994) as the young boy on the school bus with his left hand over his face as young Forrest Gump (Michael Humphreys) boards the bus.
• Has two children with his wife, Adrienne Jones - Lilah Nell Korsmo (b. April 17, 2010) and William Korsmo (b. 2012).

Trademarks:

• Often plays intelligent, thoughtful characters
  

Quotes

• I don't know what I'll do. I always thought it might be neat to be a philosopher... [about what he'll do in the future; 1991]
• I don't love acting enough to give up my life. [after his big-screen retirement from Hollywood announcement; 1991]
• I'm happy with the movies I did, and the movies I didn't do.
• [1997, MIT Spectrum]: Making movies was a real weird kind of adult experience. In a way it was like MIT, in that it was a great education. The big lesson is people are people. They're smart, funny, creative people, but they're people.
• I never had a bad experience on a movie. You read about various people that are supposedly hard to work with. You hear stories about Warren Beatty or Bill Murray. But everyone was very nice to me. Maybe it's because I was a kid. And they would use the fact that I was a kid. So when everyone was waiting and they needed Warren Beatty on the set, they would send me to go get him. You know, "Hey, there's 200 people waiting for you. You better come out here."
• [the reason why he retired from acting] I worked pretty much constantly from age 10 to 13. I did five or six movies, but my family was living in Minneapolis at the time and I hadn't been in school regularly, and my voice was going to change soon. I decided I was tired of the grind and wanted to go back to school.
• [2014] The movie I hear the most about these days is What About Bob? (1991). That seems to be one that people still voluntarily watch. Frankly, my favorite is probably Dick Tracy (1990). That was the most satisfying in terms of what I did. I don't think I could have done any better than that.
• From Case Western Law Docket: [T]hat's where my practice experience is - corporate and banking law. It's always something I've been interested in. What I'm particularly interested in is the real life impact of legal rules and legal structures. I think that the fundamental legal structures that shape our society come from corporate and financial law.
• Can't Hardly Wait was what I call my "what if?" movie, in that I did it to make sure I wasn't leaving behind what I was supposed to be doing. I did it, it was fun and I'm glad to be a part of it, but I knew afterwards I didn't want to continue acting as a career in my adult years.
• I missed having a regular childhood. I remember my agent told me that I would need to relocate to L.A. and I didn't want to do that and I didn't want to make my family do that, so I pretty much gave up acting for seven years or so. I did one more movie, Can't Hardly Wait, which was fun, but didn't change my mind that acting wasn't my calling.