Kim Coates

Did You Know?

• Coates first saw a play while attending the University of Saskatchewan, where he enrolled in a drama course as an elective.
• He supports the One Heart Source nonprofit, which focuses on education and health initiatives to end poverty.
• Coates is a dual citizen of Canada and the United States, having received his American citizenship in 2010.

Career

Coates began his professional stage work with the Stratford Festival during its 1985–86 season, becoming at age 28 the youngest actor to play the title role in Macbeth at that festival. He made his Broadway debut as Stanley Kowalski in the 1988 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, and in 1989 he performed in Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. After nearly thirty years away from the stage, he returned in 2018 as Johnny 'Rooster' Byron in the Outside the March production of Jez Butterworth's play Jerusalem, winning the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male in a Principal Role – Play at the 2018 Dora Awards. His screen debut came in the Canadian sports biopic The Boy in Blue (1986), and he appeared in several Canadian television shows and films before his Hollywood debut as a henchman in the Bruce Willis-Damon Wayans action comedy The Last Boy Scout (1991). Coates has since appeared in films such as Innocent Blood (1992), The Client (1994), Waterworld (1995), Bad Boys (1995), Battlefield Earth (2000), Pearl Harbor (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), Open Range (2003), Assault on Precinct 13 (2005), The Island (2005), Silent Hill (2006), Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), Goon (2011), Goon: Last of the Enforcers (2016), and Fantasy Island (2020). On television, he starred as Alexander 'Tig' Trager in the FX crime drama Sons of Anarchy (2008-14) and appeared in Prison Break, CSI: Miami, Ghost Wars, Godless, Van Helsing, and American Primeval. At the 7th Canadian Screen Awards, he won Best Actor in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Role for his performance as gangster Declan Gardiner in Bad Blood, and was also nominated for Best Dramatic Series; he had previously received two Gemini Award nominations. In 2024, he joined the cast of The Walking Dead: Dead City's second season as Bruegel, leader of the Silk Stockings gang. Coates played a supporting role with Kevin James in the 2026 romantic comedy film Solo Mio.