The Joe Lando Web Page

Career & Achievements
The Early Years

"I was a loner as a kid, I spent a lot of time pretending I was one person or another." It was this attitude, together with the encouragement of Alison LaPlaca (the John Laroquette Show) who was his girlfriend in high school which spurred Joe on in his decision to become an actor.

After graduating high school in 1979 and hanging around with no clear idea of what he was going to do with his life, he left Prairie View with $400.00 and instructions from his Mom on how to do laundry and headed for LA in the hopes of fame and fortune. His parents thought he'd soon come home but he persevered and his perseverance paid off, big time!

He supported himself in those early days by spinning pizza and later going on to work as a chef in a classy establishment while taking acting lessons and trying to find a break.

His first attempt at stardom was in "Star Search" in 1985.

Star Search Star Search Star Search

He earned his SAG card by making a fleeting appearance as a Security Guard in StarTrek IV. Brief appearances followed in Beauty and the Beast, Nightingales, Pros and Cons and several commercials.

Star Trek IV Star Trek IV Star Trek IV

Beauty & The Beast Beauty & The Beast Nightingales

Joe also appeared in the pilot episode of Homicide. But his big break came when he was offered a role on the soap " One Life to Live" and he moved to New York in 1989 where he finally found fame as Jake Harrison. When the storyline between Jake and Megan wound down, Joe was offered the scripts to three pilots by CBS and he chose Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman "because I wanted to be a cowboy."

Joe moved back to L.A. and the first episode of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman aired on January 1, 1993 and was an instant success. So was Joe. It was unexpectedly cancelled at the end of it's sixth season.

Being on a weekly dramatic series has left Joe little time to accept other offers, but he did spend his hiatus from DQMW working on the soap Guiding Light for 6 ½ weeks during the summer of 1993 as the mysterious Macauley West.

He has also made candid appearances on The Nanny (1996), the John Laroquette Show (1996) and had a brief role in the TV movie Alien Nation (1996). He spent part of the summer hiatus from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman filming the TV movie Shadows of Desire (1994) in which he starred with Nicolette Sheridan.

The John Larroquette Show Alien Nation - The Enemy Within Shadows of Desire

The summer of 1996 was an exceptionally busy one for Joe. He spent several weeks in Toronto, Canada filming the feature Seeds of Doubt, followed immediately by a few more weeks spent in Wilmington, North Carolina, filming the tv movie Any Place But Home which was first aired on the USA cable network on March 5, 1997 and released on video in the US in October of the same year.



Shadows of Desire		Shadows of Desire


Raymond Crawford "Seeds of Doubt"	Raymond Crawford "Seeds of Doubt"	Lucas Dempsey "Any Place but Home"	Lucas Dempsey "Any Place but Home"	Lucas Dempsey "Any Place but Home"

In the summer of 1997, Joe worked on a feature movie called "Blindness" (release scheduled for some tine in 1998) before returning to work on the sixth season of DQMW. While filming Dr. Quinn, he juggled his busy schedule between LA and Phoenix where he was working on "No Code of Conduct," a Charlie Sheen movie scheduled for release at the end of 1998. He also made a guest appearance on "The Tracy Ullman Show on HBO in January 1998. In 1999, Joe filmed the first Dr. Quinn movie, "Revolutions," and then moved his family to Vancouver to film 22 episodes (one season) of Higher Ground, on which he was also a producer. It aired for one season in 2000, on Fox Family Channel in the US, and is now showing all over the world. Then in 2001, Joe went to Montreal to film the second Dr. Quinn movie, "The Heart Within," and immediately left for Australia when he was done, to film "Attack on the Queen for TBS." TBS has renamed the movie "Counterstrike," and they plan to show it in 2003. In the meantime, in 2002, The movie has been released to video, in Europe, under its original title. In August of 2002 Joe began filming "Flood Zone" with Bruce Boxleitner.

Joe has won several awards for his accomplishments to date:

The Bronze Otto by the German magazine Bravo as the third most popular actor on T.V. (1995)
The Silver Otto by the German magazine Bravo as the second most popular actor on T.V. (1996)
The Family Film Award for Outstanding Actor in a Television Series (1996)
One of the "Fifty Most Beautiful People" in People Magazine, May, 1993
Winner of Canadian TVG "Most Popular Male Actor" - 1993
Winner of Canadian TVG "Most Popular Male Actor" - 1994
Winner of Canadian TVG "Most Popular Male Actor" - 1995
(Joe's name was not on the list of choices for this award in 1996 or he probably would have won again).
Voted 12th in cyberspace's "People Magazine's 25 Most Intriguing People of 1997" poll.

Disclaimer: All the above information and quotes have been selected
from magazines and may not be totally accurate.
All photographs used on this Web Site are copyright material
and may not be downloaded without licence from the copyright owner

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