Martin Kove was born on March 6, 1946 in Brooklyn, New York. Strong-featured, narrow-eyed actor who has portrayed a mixed bag of both good guys and bad guys. He first turned up on screen in several minor roles, and was noticed as the villainous Nero the Hero in the low-budget road race Death Race 2000 (1975), and then as Clem the sadistic rigger, breaking Jan-Michael Vincent’s ribs in White Line Fever (1975). He cropped up on the television series Cagney & Lacey (1981) portraying honest Police Detective Isbecki, and then ended up on the wrong side of a rampaging Sylvester Stallone in Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985).Kove probably scored his greatest visibility to the public in the hugely successful The Karate Kid (1984) in which he played John Kreese, the head instructor of the Cobra Kai karate school. He reprised the role in the two sequels, The Karate Kid Part II (1986) and The Karate Kid Part III (1989). Kove has since kept consistently busy, primarily in the action-thriller film genre, and has notched up over 80 film appearances to date, as well as numerous television guest roles.
Martin Kove
Movies
D-Day
Some people called it a suicide, but for the Rangers of the 2nd Battalion, that’s another word for mission. When an elite group of American soldiers are ordered to take out a series of German machine gun nests, they find themselves blindly venturing into hostile territory. Outnumbered and outgunned they…
Fun Facts
I'm truly hated and I love it. I had no idea how much anxiety people would be releasing by hating this character.
From the moment I got to Hollywood
Quotes
[on one of his most famous roles, in The Karate Kid (1984)] Over the years, kids have come up to me in places like supermarkets, and hit me and said things like, "You hurt Ralph (Ralph Macchio)!"". It makes me feel like the Darth Vader of the contemporary cinematic world. As Sensei John Kreese