Pasdar was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His father, Homayoon Pasdar, was a cardiac surgeon who was born in Iran and moved to the United States, working as a surgeon near Philadelphia. His mother, Rosemarie Sbresny was born in Königsberg, Germany, and worked as a nurse before becoming an English teacher in France.
Pasdar won a football scholarship to the University of Florida. However, he was badly injured in a car accident during his freshman year. The accident left his face scarred, his legs badly injured, and kept him in a wheelchair for several months. Pasdar finished his freshman year in a wheelchair, doing intensive physical therapy and turning his attention to campus stage productions and rediscovering a childhood interest in writing and acting. No longer able to play football, he dropped out of school and returned home, taking a job with a theater group, People's Light and Theatre Company. Here he worked on sound and lighting and also did set construction. One day, while constructing a set, he cut off the end of his left thumb. He used the resulting medical compensation to pay for attendance at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in Los Angeles.
At the age of 19, he auditioned for a role in Top Gun. Director Tony Scott was so impressed that he wrote the part of "Chipper" just for him. This led to bigger roles in Solarbabies(1986), Streets of Gold (1986), and Near Dark(1987), with Pasdar in the lead role of Caleb Colton. Other major roles include Vital Signs (1990). In 1992, he left Hollywood and returned to New York, working as a cashier for room and board, while taking the occasional small part, such as Frankie in Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way(1993).
He wrote and directed the short film Beyond Belief and directed his first feature film, the neo-noir Cement, in 1999. The film stars Chris Penn, Jeffrey Wright, Sherilyn Fenn, Henry Czerny and is written by Farscape's screenwriter Justin Monjo.
Pasdar's major break into television came in 1995, when he was cast as the title character on the short-lived Fox series Profit. From 2000 to 2002, Pasdar played the lead role of Anthropology Professor Declan Dunn in the spooky cult drama series Mysterious Ways on PAX. Pasdar played David McClaren in the final two seasons of the long-running CBS drama Judging Amy from 2004 through 2005. In 2006, he had a high-profile guest role as Gabrielle Solis' sleazy lawyer in Desperate Housewives. He currently stars in the NBC superhero drama Heroes as Nathan Petrelli.
Pasdar married lead singer Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in June 2000. The couple first met in May 1999, at the wedding of band member Emily Robison and singer-songwriter Charlie Robison. They were married in Las Vegas's Little White Wedding Chapel, in a $55 no-frills ceremony officiated by the chapel's "Pastor Ann." They have two children, Jackson Slade Pasdar (born March 15, 2001) and Beckett Finn Pasdar (born July 14, 2004). Adrian and his family currently live in Venice.
Born in Tehran, Iran...He is a cardiothoracic surgeon at a hospital in Philadelphia, PA's western surburbs.
At Marple Newtown High School (graduated 1983), Adrian was active in football, where he played defensive back at 5'11", 206 lbs, track, soccer, and of course, acting. His senior year he did BAREFOOT IN THE PARK. (Even then his talent was striking!) Although generally a good student, he cut classes, got caught smoking cigarettes, and at 15 was arrested for "borrowing" a neighbor's car, which was smashed and totaled. (The charges were dropped when he paid for the car by working various jobs.) Adrian was straightened out by his father, whom he idolizes, and his football coach, who "taught me discipline and a sense of structure in life. He helped me to be focused and responsive about daily activities. Football is one of the main things I can look back on with pride.
After high school graduation Adrian won a football scholarship to the University of Central Florida. After the first football game, he flipped his jeep on a rain-slickened highway one night on the way to Miami. He took out the windshield with his face. Legs badly mangled, the medics told Pasdar that he would walk with a pronounced limp- that is, if he were to walk again at all. Between intensive physical therapy and rehabilitation sessions, he finished out his freshman year in a wheelchair. His athletic career over, the English major turned to campus stage productions and rediscovered the joys of acting and writing that had been a major part of his childhood. (Adrian had written plays that childhood friends played in) He left school at the end of his freshman year because he could no longer play football. "I regret missing school. The only education I've had is through films I have done. It's half the reason that I do what I do, what I can learn from the places and the people."
Coming back home, Adrian got an internship at a nearby theater group, PEOPLE'S LIGHT AND THEATER COMPANY in Malvern, PA. He was a "tech resident," constructing sets and working on sound and lighting. One day while building a set, he cut off the end of his thumb. Adrian took the worker's compensation payments and went to New York to study at the famed Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. A few months later, at the age of 19, Adrian had his first acting part in TOP GUN. A steady girlfriend for two years was Cecilia Peck, actor Gregory Peck's daughter and co-star in Adrian's TORN APART. Although living in Los Angeles, while doing a play in Pennsylvania in 1989, Adrian mentioned how much he missed the changing color of the trees and snow.
After several movies he met German director Wim Wenders at the Cannes Film Festival. "Inspired by Wenders' WING OF DESIRE, Pasdar packed up his belongings and spent a year commuting between Berlin and Paris 'hanging out late at cafes and getting up early to write and cook.'" (Steven Spielberg optioned the screenplay/novel that Adrian wrote, however, nothing was ever made from it.) Refreshed, he headed straight to Los Angeles to do another half-dozen small films. He had made plenty of money but hated the Hollywood lifestyle. "I had gotten so out of touch with reality that one day in 1992," Pasdar said "I just sold my house at a $200,000.00 loss, moved back East, and put my money into T-bills. I spent the next year working behind the counter and running the cash register for room and board at Vandam Diner, a little lower east Manhattan diner, owned by a friend's father." Adrian quit his job when PROFIT came along. His hobbies include skydiving, riding a Harley, playing chess, and sporting a Bobcat head tattoo on his upper right arm. (His film company is named Bobcat Films.)
Adrian wrote a short film called BEYOND BELIEF. It was also Adrian's directing debut. Declared "a dazzling tone-poem, as original and accomplished as short-film making gets," it debuted at East Hamptons Film Festival in October 1995. BEYOND BELIEF received a Finalist Award at the Houston Film Festical in June 1996. It has been shown on Robert Redford's Indepedant Film Network. BEYOND BELIEF is the "story of a lost soul visited by his guardian angel on the last day of his life."
Currently, Adrian is busy in Austin, Texas directing and co-producing CEMENT. As his feature film directorial debut, Adrian chose Justin Mongo's "crisply written thriller."
Besides the award for BEYOND BELIEF, Adrian was nominated for 1996's Petcabus Award for "Best Actor in a Drama series" for "Profit."
Adrian has done stage plays including "The Glass Menagerie." (Adrian says this "has always been on of my favorites.") He has also done some off-Broadway work.
