Born Dean George Tanaka on July 31, 1966, the son of soldier Roger Tanaka and actress Sharon Thomas, who recently played a TV reporter in Calendar Girls with Helen Mirren and Julie Walters, Cain's name was changed at the age of three when his mother, who had divorced his father before he was born, married director Christopher Cain. Dean has a brother, actor and producer Roger Cain, and a half-sister, actress Krisinda Cain. He grew up in Malibu, California, and attended Santa Monica High School, where he was a sports fanatic. His athletic success led to seventeen offers of scholarships, but he turned them all down to attend Princeton University and get a degree in history. There he continued his success as a football player, setting an NCAA record for the most successful interventions in a single season, and captained the volleyball team. He also dated future Blue Lagoon star Brooke Shields for two years. After graduating, Dean was forced to abandon his sporting career due to injury, and turned to screenwriting before starting to take on work as an actor.
Cain's early acting roles were mostly in commercials and in television, despite his having appeared in his adoptive father's film The Stone Boy with Robert Duvall and Glenn Close, as a teenager. He made several appearances in Beverly Hills 90210, alongside Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty. Dean also hosted the celebrity hobby series Off Camera with Dean Cain, which he also directed. But the role that made Cain famous was that of Superman in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, which also starred Desperate Housewives' Teri Hatcher. The series ran for four seasons and was immensely popular, spawning a series of spin-off books including Lois & Clark: A Superman Novel by Hugo Award winner CJ Cherryh.
After Superman, Cain appeared in numerous TV movies, including Dogboys, The Glow, and Mayday, as well as features such as Lost, with Ashley Scott and Danny Trejo; Truth; and September Dawn, with Lolita Davidovich and Jon Voight. Cain also had regular roles in the TV shows Hope & Faith, with Faith Ford and Kelly Ripa, and Las Vegas, with James Caan and Josh Duhamel. Cain played Inspector Jack Ellis in The Division alongside Bonnie Bedelia, Nancy McKeon, and Lisa Vidal and he also appeared on chat shows with Rosie ODonnell, Larry King, Wayne Brady, Caroline Rhea, Ellen DeGeneres, and Sharon Osbourne. He has his own production company, Angry Dragon Entertainment. In his spare time Cain works for a children's charity called the Aspen Grassroots Experience.
Cain has a son, Christopher Dean Cain, by his former girlfriend, actress and Playboy model Samantha Torres. He was formerly engaged to country singer Mindy McReady, and has also been romantically linked to Playboy model Pamela Anderson, another Playboy model, Samantha Torres and volleyball player Gabrielle Reece. Cain has houses in Malibu, Aspen, Colorado, and Ibiza.
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