Sherman Howard

Intro

Sherman Howard has built a career that reaches from repertory theatre to horror cinema, superhero television and animation. His best-known screen transformation is Bub, the zombie in George A. Romero's Day of the Dead. Yet that part sits beside a substantial stage career rather than replacing it. The distance between a largely physical creature performance, a comic-book antagonist and a historical figure in a play helps explain why his work can be familiar even to viewers who do not immediately connect the roles with the same actor.

Career snapshot

Born in Chicago in 1949, Howard began working with the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco in 1971. He subsequently worked in regional and New York theatre. His earlier screen credits sometimes use the name Howard Sherman, including Day of the Dead; that credit belongs to the same performer. The stage background is important to his career because it predates the film that made him especially recognisable to horror audiences and continued long after it, through productions demanding very different kinds of character work.

The entry point

In the 1985 Day of the Dead, Bub became an unusually memorable figure within Romero's population of the undead. At a 2013 public discussion, Romero praised Howard's contribution and recalled that the character had survived from an earlier, longer version of the screenplay. He described Bub as sympathetic and credited the actor with making him vivid. That assessment places the performance itself at the centre of the character's impact. Howard's presence had to register through posture, attention and response within a role whose appearance could easily have reduced it to a creature effect.

Screen identity and style

Television offered other forms of transformation. Howard played Lex Luthor in Superboy and later supplied the voice of Derek Powers, also known as Blight, in Batman Beyond. He also appeared as the Talarian Endar in Star Trek: The Next Generation's Suddenly Human. A surviving costume record identifies both the episode and Howard's character on its production tag. These roles put him into several different imagined worlds, with costume or animation contributing to the finished character while the actor supplied the performance beneath or behind that presentation.

Collaborations and patterns

His theatre work includes Henry in The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey's 2010 production of The Lion in Winter, opposite Lisa Harrow as Eleanor. The company's study guide documents the pairing. A historical family drama offers a different scale of performance from a brief television guest appearance: relationships have to accumulate across sustained encounters, with the audience watching the actors negotiate them in real time. That production provides a concrete example of Howard's continuing classical and regional theatre work alongside the genre characters that attract much of his screen recognition.

Era reflection

In 2014 he played painter Rudolf Bauer in Lauren Gunderson's Bauer at 59E59 Theaters. San Francisco Playhouse produced the New York run, directed by Bill English, with Susi Damilano and Stacy Ross. The play imagines a confrontation involving Bauer, his wife Louise and Hilla Rebay, bringing questions of artistic recognition and personal betrayal into a three-person drama. Howard's title role placed him at the centre of that encounter. The theatre's archive preserves the production dates, cast and photographs, grounding this chapter of his work in a specific staging.

Legacy and rediscovery

Howard's credits demonstrate how a performer can remain associated with a striking film character while continuing a much wider working life. Bub, Lex Luthor, Endar and Rudolf Bauer require different relationships to an audience, from physical recognition to sustained dialogue. The gallery records Howard himself rather than those fictional or historical identities: a 2009 appearance photographed by SteBo and a 2013 self-portrait credited to Howsherm. They are two distinct photographs, retained with their original contexts and licences, offering a view of the actor behind the changing roles.

Selected screen roles

• Day of the Dead: Bub — 1985
• Superboy: Lex Luthor / Warren Eckworth — 1989–1992
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: Endar — 1990
• Batman Beyond: Derek Powers / Blight (voice) — From 1999
• Bauer: Rudolf Bauer — 2014 stage production

A career in pictures

Two distinct photographs of the performer, separated by date and source; neither is presented as a production still.

Sherman Howard appearance (2009)

Public appearance

SteBo photograph dated May 9, 2009.

Sherman Howard self-portrait (2013)

Portrait

Self-portrait credited to Howsherm, dated September 9, 2013.

Rewatch notes

• Credited as Howard Sherman in Day of the Dead.
• Played Rudolf Bauer at 59E59 Theaters in 2014.
• Played Henry opposite Lisa Harrow in The Lion in Winter in 2010.