Ron Kovic

Ron Kovic

writer, actor, additional crew

Ron Kovic was born on Jul 04, 1946 in USA. Ron Kovic's big-screen debut came with Born on the Fourth of July directed by Oliver Stone in 1989, strarring Parade Veteran (uncredited). Ron Kovic is known for Born on the Fourth of July directed by Oliver Stone, Tom Cruise stars as Ron Kovic and Bryan Larkin as Young Ron. Ron Kovic has got 1 awards and 4 nominations so far. The most recent award Ron Kovic achieved is Golden Globes, USA. The upcoming new movie Ron Kovic plays is Born on the Fourth of July which will be released on Jan 05, 1990.

Imagine having Tom Cruise play your life story in a movie, and ending up on stage in Hollywood celebrating the movie's two Oscars? All Ron Kovic had to do to achieve this fantasy was serve three tours of duty in Vietnam, get paralyzed for life by combat wounds, and write a best-selling book about it all.A war veteran turned anti-war activist, Kovic turned his 1976 autobiography, "Born on the Fourth of July", into the eponymous film with the help of fellow Vietnam vet Oliver Stone. The son of a grocery clerk and a housewife, Kovic grew up in the Midwest and New York's suburban Massapequa, Long Island. In high school he competed as a wrestler and pole vaulter, and after graduation hoped to play major league baseball. But he enlisted in the Marines in 1964, in the early days of the Vietnam war, after the assassination of President Kennedy and inspired by the speech of a Marine recruiter. His gung-ho Marine patriotism was undermined by two incidents - one in which he feared he had accidentally killed a fellow Marine in the chaos of combat, and another in which Vietnamese children were unintentionally wounded in a night assault. These incidents made him so desperate he was relieved when he was wounded by gunfire. But a subsequent bullet tore into Kovic's spine and paralyzed him from the chest down. Kovic returned to the States in 1968 and was awarded a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart, as he received extensive medical care. He began college studies a year later, but landed in a rundown veterans hospital after an accident. The horrible conditions in the hospital turned his increasing despair into outrage over what he felt was America's betrayal of Vietnam veterans and he began to seriously question the government's conduct of the war itself.Following the killings of student protestors by National Guardsman at Kent State College in 1970, Kovic joined the Vietnam Veterans against the War and transformed himself into a pro-active anti-war supporter. During the 1972 Republican Party convention, Kovic and some fellow vets in wheelchairs succeeded in disrupting President Nixon's televised acceptance speech, an event he considers one of the highlights of his activist years, which also included protests against nuclear-power plants, American interference in Central America and the too-often inferior medical treatment of war veterans.Kovic seems to have served as the basis for Jon Voight's war-veteran-turned-anti-war activist in Retour (1978). He served as a writer in residence at State University of New York at Stonybrook in 1983 and later moved to Redondo Beach, California. Here he considered a career in politics, but eventually rejected a Democratic Party request that he run for Congress in 1990.

  • Birthday

    Jul 04, 1946
  • Place of Birth

    Ladysmith, Wisconsin, USA

Known For

Awards

1 wins & 4 nominations

Golden Globes, USA
1990
Best Screenplay - Motion Picture
Winner - Golden Globe

Movies & TV Shows

All
Movies