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William Atherton (born William Atherton Knight on July 30, 1947 in Orange, Connecticut, USA) is an American film, theatre and television actor.

In 1974, Atherton took a major role the film The Sugarland Express. In 1977, he starred in the drama movie Looking for Mr. Goodbar. His well known roles are in The Hindenburg released in 1975, the 1984 hit Ghostbusters as the fanatical EPA agent Walter Peck, the 1985 comedy Real Genius as Professor Jerry Hathaway, the 1988 action hit film Die Hard and the 1990 sequel Die Hard 2: Die Harder as the egotistical reporter Dick Thornburg.

Other film credits include No Mercy, The Pelican Brief, Bio-Dome, Mad City, The Crow: Salvation, The Last Samurai, the TV movies Buried Alive, Headspace and Virus.

His guest appearances on TV shows include The Twilight Zone, Desperate Housewives, The Equalizer, Law & Order, and Justice League as the voice of Dr. Destiny/John Dee.

According to writer/director Kevin Smith on the commentary to his 1995 film Mallrats, Atherton was asked to play the main villain of the film Jared Svenning. As told by Smith, Atherton considered the film childish and turned it down, prefering instead to make the Pauly Shore vehicle Bio-Dome.

According to the DVD commentary for Ghostbusters, Atherton was angry with the role for a number of years, due to people recognizing him as "Walter Peck", and calling out "Hey Dickless!" The name refers to the exchange between Ray, Peck, the Mayor and Venkman about Peck:

"Everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by dickless here."
"They caused an explosion!"
"Is this true?"
"Yes it's true. This man has no dick."

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