Acting background
Smith was discovered by a talent agent while acting in a school play, Man of La Mancha. After a few years of working in film and television, he landed the role of Terry "The Toad" Fields in George Lucas's 1973 film American Graffiti, a role he reprised in the film's 1979 sequel, More American Graffiti.
In 1973, he and American Graffiti co-star Cindy Williams appeared together in an episode of Love, American Style titled "Love and the Time Machine".
In 1974, he starred with Ron Howard in The Spikes Gang, filmed in Spain, along with Lee Marvin and Gary Grimes, and in 1978, he earned a starring role in Cotton Candy, directed by Howard.
In 1975, he auditioned for the role of Luke Skywalker in Lucas's 1977 film Star Wars, which eventually went to Mark Hamill.
Smith played one of Buddy Holly's bandmates in The Buddy Holly Story, a race car driver in Disney's Herbie Goes Bananas, and the starring role as a scientist in Never Cry Wolf. His work in Starman, as Mark Shermin, a SETI member sympathetic to the title character's plight, was also lauded. In 1979 Smith was cast alongside Barney Martin as the lead in Norman Lear's last television series concept, McGurk: A Dog's Life, which never progressed beyond the pilot.
Another role was in "Banshee", an episode of The Ray Bradbury Theater that costarred Peter O'Toole and Jennifer Dale. He also appeared in the episode "Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar". One of his later starring roles was in "The Beacon", an episode of The Twilight Zone where he starred with Martin Landau and Giovanni Ribisi in an early role.
He was in The Untouchables, where he played Oscar Wallace, an accountant who suggests indicting Al Capone on tax evasion'. After this, he co-starred in The Hot Spot and Deep Cover, and in the mid-1990s, he appeared in films such as Speechless, I Love Trouble, and Perfect Alibi.
Smith portrayed Dr. Harold Jaffe in the 1993 HBO film And the Band Played On. In 1995, he performed in the TV miniseries Streets of Laredo.
He also appeared in The Beast and also provided the voice of Renfield in the Goosebumps: Escape from Horrorland in 1996 and in a minor role in the big budget Deep Impact in 1998. He played a major character in the made-for-television movie Blackout Effect.
More recently, he has appeared in mini-series such as P.T. Barnum, Kingdom Hospital and The Triangle as well as the feature film Lucky You directed by Curtis Hanson. In 2009, he played a featured role, Sheriff Golightly, in the second episode of season two of the TV series Fringe.
