Biography

David Patrick Kelly

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Compact, feisty and fierce character actor David Patrick Kelly was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Margaret Elizabeth (Murphy) and Robert Corby Kelly, Sr., an accountant. He burst onto the acting scene in 1979, playing the devious leader of the leather-clad gang "The Rogues" in Walter Hill's controversial New York City gang film The Warriors (1979). Kelly's tight-lipped expressions and attitude that made him appear like a grenade with the pin pulled, got him plenty of roles playing defiant young men, often in trouble with authority. He locked horns with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in Walter Hill's fast-paced 48 Hrs. (1982), was dropped over a cliff by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the violent Commando (1985), was a member of a trio of killers after Harry Dean Stanton in David Lynch's' Wild at Heart (1990), and played, T Bird, the leader of a gang of arsonist murderers in The Crow (1994). His range of roles in a wide variety of genres has earned him great respect in Hollywood as he is a wonderfully captivating actor. One of his most popular and influential performances came with the unsettling screeching cries of "Warriors, come out to plaaayyy", from his debut on-screen role!
- IMDb mini biography by: firehouse44

The famous "Warriors come out to play" scene was improvised by him in collaboration with Walter Hill who told him to just "come up with something" when he felt the scripted scene wasn't working. He then gathered up some empty beer bottles he found under the board walk and created the taunting dialogue based on a neighbor who used to intimidate him.
He is an avid martial artist with a Second Degree Black Belt (Nidan Rank) in Seido Karate and a practitioner of three forms of Tai Chi (Chen, Yang, Palm).
He is a skilled mandolin and guitar player and appears accompanying himself in Spike Lee's Crooklyn (1994) singing a song he improvised for the film and on the CDs for two Broadway shows, "Twelfth Night" and "Working". He also sang and played mandolin on the 2012 Grammy Award winning soundtrack of ONCE, the Broadway musical.
He received an 1998 OBIE award for Sustained Excellence for his work in classic, avant garde, and new plays.
Plays ukulele and sings "Banks of the Ohio" on the soundtrack to John Turturro's "Romance and Cigarettes".

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