Dan Butler, who stars as macho radio sportscaster Bob "Bulldog" Briscoe on "Frasier", came prepared to play a character occasionally sharing a studio with Dr. Frasier Crane - Butler and series star Kelsey Grammer roomed together while apprenticing at the Globe Theater in San Diego.

A native of Huntington, Indiana, Butler was raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

He decided to pursue a career in acting after often serving as the entertainment at family gatherings. He made his performing debut in a local production of The Music Man. Butler joined the Indiana-Purdue theater group while in high school, and during his tenure he received a national Irene Ryan (The Beverly Hillbillies) Grant for acting studies.

He made his Broadway debut in the American premiere of Harold Pinter's The Hot House, and he also starred in Biloxi Blues. He appeared off-Broadway in True West, The Lisbon Traviata, The Widow Claire and Emerald City, and in Much Ado About Nothing at Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park. He has performed in regional stage productions at such theaters as San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater, The Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and Trinity Square in Providence, Rhode Island.

A casting director saw his performance in The Lisbon Traviata at the Taper and sought him for the Frasier role. From 1993 to 1995, Butler served as the associate artistic director of the Road Theater Company in Van Nuys, California, and he received a Critic's Choice Award for his work as a director of that organization's production of The Walkers.

After making his feature-film debut in Silence of the Lambs, he starred in The Long Walk Home, Rising Sun, I Love Trouble, Longtime Companion and The Fan. Among his additional television credits are guest-starring roles in the television movie The Rape of Dr. Willis and in the series Roseanne, Picket Fences, Caroline in the City, The X-Files and, more recently, Just Shoot Me, From the Earth to the Moon and More Tales of the City.

Recently, Butler made his television directorial debut with the Frasier episode "Frasier's Gotta Have It."

Butler has received critical acclaim for the Los Angeles and New York productions of his autobiographical one-man show, The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me, which consists of numerous characters in 14 vignettes connected by a theme of what Butler calls "processing my life; what being gay means." The off-Broadway production of his show garnered Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations.

Butler lives in Los Angeles, where in his spare time he writes screenplays and enjoys camping, bicycling, hiking and traveling.

His birthday is December 2.