Neal Bledsoe (born March 26, 1981) is a Canadian and American actor, writer, and filmmaker.
Bledsoe was born in Toronto, but grew up in Seattle, Washington. He was named after the Beat Generation icon and Merry Prankster, Neal Cassady, and a car thief from Seattle his father knew as a boy. Both of his grandfathers served in the Air Force during World War II and his maternal grandfather was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his part in the bombing of the Nazi oil refinery at Ploiești. He is the second cousin of former NFL quarterback, Drew Bledsoe. His mother was a life insurance underwriter and estate planner before becoming an executive for a company that worked all over the world. His father has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Toronto where he studied under the philosopher Marshall McLuhan.
He moved fourteen times around Seattle area growing up, living in Magnolia, Ballard, Fremont, Edmonds, Magnolia again, Ravenna, Downtown, Queen Anne, West Seattle, Queen Anne again, Fremont again, Queen Anne a third time, Bainbridge Island and Capitol Hill. He attended Roosevelt High School (Seattle) and Garfield High School (Seattle) in Seattle, including a brief stint at Ascent within the CEDU system of schools, before finally graduating from the Shawnigan Lake School and then spending a post-graduate year at the Idyllwild Arts Academy, to grow as an actor and a writer. It was at the last of these two schools where he began to first publish his writing.