Mike Lookinland

Mike Lookinland
Mike Lookinland at TV Land Awards ceremony in 2009.
Personal Information
Birthname:	Michael Paul Lookinland
Born:	(1960-12-19) December 19, 1960
Birthplace:	Mount Pleasant, Utah, U.S.
Occupation/ Career:	Actor
Years active:	1969-2000
Spouse(s):	Kelly Wermuth (1987-present)
Related to:	Paul Lookinland (father) Karen Lookinland (mother) Theresa Lookinland (sister) Todd Lookinland (brother)
Hometown	Salt Lake City, Utah
Character/Series involvement
Series:	The Brady Bunch The Brady Brides The Bradys
Character played:	Bobby Brady

Michael Paul "Mike" Lookinland (born December 19, 1960) appeared as the youngest brother Bobby Brady on The Brady Bunch.

Biography

Early life

Mike Lookinland was originally born in Mount Pleasant, Utah as the second of three children born to Paul and Karen Lookinland. He has a younger brother named Todd, who starred in "Blue Bird" with Elizabeth Taylor and an older sister Theresa. Lookinland grew up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Mormon. He is a self-professed conservationist and "camping nut". Mike's mother Karen was an amateur photographer, and occasionally took pictures of the Brady Bunch.

Mike's father was a Vice Principal at San Pedro High School in San Pedro, California, part of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), in the late 1970s. He attended the private Chadwick School on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Southern California, and graduated in 1978. During the Brady Bunch years, Mike also attended Hollywood Professional School with co-stars Maureen McCormick, Christopher Knight and Susan Olsen.

Mike Lookinland (left) with Maureen McCormick, Christopher Knight and Susan Olsen in Hollywood Professional School library, ca. 1972-1973.

Career

By 1968, Mike Lookinland had been a TV commercial actor and had done around thirty commercials. This year, he was offered two roles: as Eddie Corbett on The Courtship of Eddie's Father and Bobby Brady on The Brady Bunch. His family chose the latter one, suggesting that it would be healthier for him to be around other kids, rather than being an the only child amongst an all-adult cast. (The role of Eddie Corbett eventually went to Brandon Cruz.) He has naturally sandy-colored wavy hair, which did not match Peter's or Greg's natural dark brown color. For Brady Bunch, he had to have his hair dyed dark brown with Clairol #43 hair spray and straightened to match. Occasionally, the lights on set though were so hot that his dye job would sometimes run down his face. During the last two seasons of The Brady Bunch, his natural hair color was finally allowed to show. Bobby (Mike) was always the type of kid who was sweet, funny, energetic, and sometimes dramatic during his role on The Brady Bunch.

Mike's brother, Todd, appeared in a Brady Bunch episode that served as the pilot for a spin-off series called Kelly's Kids about a husband and wife that adopt three boys, one white, one black, and one Asian. The pilot was not bought, however. In another episode during the show's final season, Bobby kisses a girl named Milicent (Melissa Sue Anderson) and he sees “sky rockets.” She then informs him that she may have the mumps and he "shouldn't have done that." Bobby and his family nervously await her telephone call with the doctor's results. Four years later, the two reunited on an episode of Little House on the Prairie, on which Anderson played Mary Ingalls, and Lookinland guest starred. Melissa Sue Anderson was also raised in the LDS (Mormon) church.

Mike Lookinland on "Little House on the Prairie", 1977.

Mike also provided the voice of Oblio in the animated film The Point!. Shortly after the final season of The Brady Bunch wrapped filming, he appeared alongside Jennifer Jones and Paul Newman in the 1974 disaster film blockbuster The Towering Inferno and on the 1970s TV show The Secrets of Isis.

In fall 1976, Mike appeared on an episode of Donny and Marie with Maureen McCormick, Susan Olsen and Florence Henderson, which served as an inspiration for the later The Brady Bunch Hour. Mike had no interest in doing the show, and tried to get out of the show by asking for a double salary. However, his request was accepted, resulting in a raised salary for all cast members. Even then, Mike had no desire to do the show, so he started to play hookie from the rehearsals, until one day Florence Henderson found him around the parking lot and reminded him that they were all professionals doing their job and "if his heart wasn't in it, then neither should he be."

Mike reprised his role as Bobby Brady in the 1981 made-for-TV movie The Brady Girls Get Married, 1988 Christmas special A Very Brady Christmas, and again in the 1990 sequel series The Bradys, in which Bobby Brady was involved in a racing car accident, which made him a wheelchair user throughout the series. Interestingly, the first two names of the Brady father character played by Robert Reed was "Michael Paul", the same as Lookinland's actual names, also, Mike Lookinland's character was named Bobby (a short form of Robert), the same as Robert Reed's actual name.

Mike is the only Brady Bunch cast member to have appeared in all original Brady Bunch spin-offs. (That is, if "The Brady Girls Get Married" TV movie is counted as a pilot to "The Brady Brides".)

Personal life

After graduating high school, Mike went back to Utah and briefly attended the University of Utah, but dropped out (much like Bobby Brady himself did) and became a movie production assistant and a cameraman.

Since 1987, MIke has been married to Kelly Wermuth, who worked as a script supervisor on Touched by an Angel. They have two sons: Scott (born 1990) and Joe (born 1993). He was portrayed by his son Scott in the TV movie Growing Up Brady, where he himself appeared as a cameraman. Years after leaving 'The Brady Bunch, Lookinland cut off the end of his index finger with a table saw. The end was deemed too small to be sewn back on, but it has never affected his career.

On November 12, 1997, Mike totaled his 1990 Ford Bronco in a car accident on an Utah highway 35 miles north of St. George, while returning home from his work at St. George as a cameraman on The Promised Land. His blood alcohol level was found to be 0.258%, more than three times the Utah legal limit of 0.08. After being treated for cuts and bruises, Mike was arrested and later released on a $1,550 bail. On May 27, 1998, Mike was fined $1,500 and sentenced to 24 hours of community service. Being an alcoholic at the time, Mike commented that after "the choice between sobering up or drinking became the choice of living or dying", he quit alcohol, and has been sober ever since.

Mike is a Deadhead (a fan of The Grateful Dead).

In mid-2000s, after his wife brought home a library book on making concrete countertops, Mike decided to quit his job as a cameraman and started up his own business, making custom concrete countertops.

External links

• Template:IMDb name
• Mike Lookinland's Arrest at rotten.com
• Mike Lookinland at thesmokinggun.com