On this day in 1969, Brian O’Halloran was born, and 25 years later he starred in the film that he would come to be forever associated with: Clerks. A first-generation American (both his parents were from Ireland), O’Halloran at first wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an automotive engineer, but when his father died with O’Halloran was 15, he turned to acting instead and participated in numerous high school and college productions before acting in Clerks. Since Clerks, almost all of O’Halloran’s film work has been playing roles in Kevin Smith films as Dante Hicks and various other members of the Hicks family in properties such as Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Clerks: The Animated Series, and Clerks 2. O’Halloran also starred in the Kevin Smith-produced film Vulgar about a traumatized circus clown (apparently the backstory of the clown in the View Askew logo). Oddly, O’Halloran also has a small part in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, which is some pretty random casting, if you ask me. When he’s not working on films, O’Halloran is still active in the theatre community, working with the Boomerang Theatre Company, the New Jersey Repertory Company and the Tri-State Actors Theatre, among others. He turns 42 today.