Alan Wray Tudyk (born March 16, 1971) is an American actor known for his roles as Simon in the black comedy Death at a Funeral, as Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, as Sonny in the sci-fi drama I, Robot, as Hoban "Wash" Washburne in the science fiction and western television series Firefly and movie Serenity, and more recently in Dollhouse as well as Dale Maddox in V.

Early life

Tudyk is of Polish descent and was born in El Paso, Texas. He is the son of Betty Loyce (née Wiley) and Timothy Nicholas Tudyk. He was raised in the Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas, where he attended Plano Senior High School. Tudyk studied drama at the Methodist-affiliated Lon Morris College in Jacksonville, Texas where he won the Academic Excellence award for Drama. While in college, he played Beaver Smith in an eastern New Mexico summer stock theater production of Billy the Kid. In 1993, Tudyk entered Juilliard but left in 1996 before earning a degree.