Tupper, nicknamed Jimmy, was born in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on August 4, 1965, and studied acting at both Montreal’s Concordia University as well as New Jersey’s Rutgers University. Nobody really knew who he was, however, until 2001, the year he launched his film career and married Katherine Mayfield.
His first role was as a cop at a bridge in the film Joe Dirt, starring David Spade, Brittany Daniel, Dennis Miller, Adam Beach, Christopher Walken, and Jaime Pressly. That same year, he appeared in Peroxide Passion and in Corky Romano, the latter in which Chris Kattan, Vinessa Shaw, Peter Falk, Peter Berg, Chris Penn, and Fred Ward also starred.
Tupper went on to make guest appearances in a number of TV series, including Gilmore Girls (starring Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel), in which he played a biker for two episodes; CSI: New York; and How I Met Your Mother. He also reprised the role of Henry Kline/Klein for Love’s Long Journey and Love’s Abiding Joy, before landing his best-known role as Jack Slattery on the hit series Men in Trees in 2006.
Men in Trees, in which Tupper stars alongside Anne Heche, Abraham Benrubi, Emily Bergl, Sarah Strange, Derek Richardson, Timothy Webber, Suleka Mathew, and Seana Kofoed, is currently shooting its second season.
Amidst his split from his wife Katherine in November of 2006 (after five years of marriage), Tupper began making headlines for his romantic entanglement with Trees co-star Heche, who was involved in a separation of her own, from husband Coley Laffoon, to whom she had also been married for five years.
While the Tupper-Heche affair was speculated as the reason for both marital break-ups, in Heche’s and Laffoon’s case, there was a lot more going on, including accusations from both partners, a custody battle over their son Homer, and, most recently, a fight over furniture. Currently, Tupper and Heche are still romantically involved, even though neither is technically divorced.
The actor’s latest project is the made-for-TV movie Pictures of Hollis Woods, co-starring Sissy Spacek.
YUDDY
