Chris Pedersen (actor)

‹ The template below (BLP IMDb refimprove) is being considered for deletion. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus.›

Chris Pedersen 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.

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 1990's 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 [1] team "AI Motorvators". The self funded team entered the 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.

External links

• Chris Pedersen at the Internet Movie Database

Persondata
Name	Pedersen, Chris
Alternative names	CJ Pedersen
Short description	Actor, Race vehicle driver/builder, Autonomous vehicle builder, DARPA team leader,
Date of birth	May 22 1963
Place of birth	San Francisco, CA
Date of death
Place of death