Joseph B. Sagal (born February 12, 1957) is an American actor and screenwriter. He is the son of film director Boris Sagal.
He originated the part of "The Visitor" on the Geffen Playhouse stage in the World Premiere Steppenwolf Production of the initial 357 performances of Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile.[1][2] This production was the Los Angeles debut of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. He played the supervillain, Gunn, in the DC movie The Return of Swamp Thing. He then wrote the screenplay for, acted in and worked as an executive producer for the film Elvis & Nixon.[3][4][5] The first film has recently been officially acquired by Amazon.com.[6][7][8] Sagal even met Elvis Presley on the set of his father's 1965 film Girl Happy,[9] which eventually inspired him to personally take the role of Elvis first as "The Visitor" in Steve Martin's play “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” and then write and sell the screenplay for Elvis & Nixon. He later played Elvis again for legendary writer Stephen King in his televised mini-series, “Nightmares and Dreamscapes”, particularly in King's Rock n Roll story, “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band”, as the Mayor of Rock 'n' Roll in Heaven. The miniseries was shot in Australia. He also appeared in “Not Another Celebrity Movie,” meant to be a spoof of the Ocean's Eleven film, playing a comedic version of George Clooney. He later played an announcer directly made to impersonate Elvis in the movie Redline, which was meant to pay homage to the Fast and the Furious franchise. Sagal returned to his Elvis role by playing him again as a vampire hunter on the SyFy channel in the series The Chronicle in the episode “ The King is Undead”. Additionally, he did two more movies for New Line Cinema: “Quiet Cool” playing the stoner Toker, and “The Hidden” playing the Drunk.
Sagal's father, Boris Sagal, was a Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant who worked as a television director.[10]