Part of Lost featuring Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, Josh Holloway, Jorge Garcia, and Naveen Andrews.
Rise to Fame
He spent a decade as the reliable TV nobody, faces you recognize, names you don't. The Stepfather (1987) was the first crack in that pattern. Playing a serial killer who reinvents himself as the perfect family man, he brought, in Roger Ebert's words, 'all kinds of creepy dimensions' to the role. J.J. Abrams already knew him from a recurring role on Alias and cast him in Lost without an audition. John Locke turned out to be the role that made everything before it look like warm-up.
In the Spotlight
The post-Lost years haven't exactly produced another John Locke, but he's kept working in ways most Emmy winners his age don't. Several seasons on Hawaii Five-0, two seasons on Amazon's critically praised Patriot. He's the kind of actor who fills a room without asking for credit. His Cameo page raises money for the Virginia Beach SPCA, which is about as O'Quinn as it gets.
Side Notes
He grew up one of 11 siblings in Newberry, a small town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. He changed his last name from Quinn to O'Quinn because another actor had already registered Terrance Quinn. He met his wife while learning to ride a horse for Heaven's Gate (1980), the notorious Western that derailed Michael Cimino's career. He's a guitarist and a Neil Young devotee who once wrote and directed a stage musical called Orchestrina. For someone best known as a serial killer and a mystic, that resume has range.