Born in England, Joe Penny graduated to Hollywood hunkdom in the late 1970s, beginning with an appearance in the 1977 good-ole-boy flick Delta County USA. Other films followed, but Penny's celebrity status was contingent upon his television work. He rose to prominence with good roles in TV movies and miniseries like The Girls in the Office and The Gossip Columnist. In the 1980s, Joe Penny starred on no fewer than three weekly series: he played trigger-happy Bugsy Siegel in The Gangster Chronicles (1981), private eye Nick Ryder in Riptide (1984-86) and undercover investigator Jake Styles in Jake and the Fatman (1987-92).