Born in Marion, IN. The son of a dental technician, he moved with his family to Los Angeles at age five, but after his mother's death, he returned to the Midwest at age eight and was raised on a relative's Iowa farm. After graduating from high school, he returned to California, where he attended Santa Monica Junior College and UCLA. He began acting with James Whitmore's little theater group, appeared in occasional TV commercials, and played bit parts in several films. In 1952 he went to New York, where after hanging around the theater district earning his living as a busboy, he got a part in Broadway's See the Jaguar. He later observed classes at the Actors Studio, played bits in TV dramas, and returned to Broadway in The Immoralist (1954). This last appearance resulted in a screen test at Warner's and one of the most spectacularly brief careers of any screen star. In just more than a year, and in only three films, Dean became a widely admired screen personality, a personification of the restless American youth of the mid-50s, an embodiment of the title of one of his films, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955). Dean was killed in a highway crash while driving his Porsche to Salinas, to compete in a racing event. His adulation by fans grew posthumously to legendary proportions. Many of them refused to accept his death, and a James Dean cult developed into a mass mystique of a kind that surrounded the personality of no other star since Valentino. The date of his death became a film, SEPTEMBER 30, 1955 (1978).  Nominated for Actor 1955: EAST OF EDEN  Nominated for Actor 1956: GIANT 2 nominations (posthumous)