Kurt Fuller

Kurt Fuller (born September 16, 1953, San Francisco, California, raised in Stockton) is an American actor with a distinctive tall, angular presence that has made him a reliable choice for officiously comic authority figures across three decades of film and television. He earned a degree in English literature at UC Berkeley, then spent the better part of a decade selling real estate in the Pacific Palisades while performing in Los Angeles theater at night. The two careers converged in 1986 when he created the lead role in Steven Berkoff's "Kvetch," a production that earned rave reviews on both coasts.

It was that stage work that led to Ghostbusters II. Harold Ramis's then-wife saw one of Fuller's performances eight times and arranged for him to meet director Ivan Reitman. Because the original Walter Peck actor William Atherton was unavailable, Reitman remembered Fuller and offered him the part of Jack Hardemeyer, the ambitious mayoral aide and secondary antagonist of Ghostbusters II (1989), without negotiation. Fuller was cast largely on the strength of his stage reputation rather than an extensive film history.

Hardemeyer is Mayor Lenny's principal aide, managing the Mayor's political image as he prepares a run for governor. He obstructs the Ghostbusters at every turn and ultimately has them wrongly committed to Parkview Psychiatric Hospital when they threaten to go public with the Psychomagnotheric Slime story, believing this will shield the Mayor from controversy. The plan backfires catastrophically: with the Ghostbusters locked away, supernatural chaos sweeps New York City unchecked, and Mayor Lenny fires Hardemeyer on the spot once he learns what happened. The character continued in IDW Publishing's Ghostbusters comics, where Hardemeyer resurfaces after the Vigo incident having been blackballed and left homeless. He breaks into a condemned Shandor Property, makes an alliance with resident ghosts, and arms them with electron-powered variants of the Ghostbusters' own equipment designed to leave humans comatose. Winston Zeddemore ultimately unravels the scheme and rescues his teammates.

In the years following, Fuller appeared in No Holds Barred (1989), Wayne's World (1992), Scary Movie (2000), Ray (2004), and The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), among other films. On television, he became particularly well known for playing Coroner Woody Strode in the USA Network mystery-comedy Psych (2009-2014) and for portraying the angel Zachariah across multiple seasons of Supernatural (2009-2019). He is married to writer Jessica Hendra.