Alexander Ross Winter (born 17 July 1965) is a British-born American actor and filmmaker. As an actor, he is best known for playing Bill S. Preston, Esq., in the 1989 film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and its sequels Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991) and Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020). He is also known for his role as Marko in the 1987 vampire film The Lost Boys.
As a filmmaker, Winter is known for co-writing, co-directing, and starring in the 1993 surrealist comedy film Freaked. He has also directed numerous television shows and documentaries, and co-created sketch comedy series The Idiot Box (1991).
Winter was born in London on 17 July 1965. His mother, Gregg Mayer, is a New York-born dancer who trained with Martha Graham, and founded a modern-dance company in London in the mid-1960s. His father, Ross Albert Winter, is an Australian who danced with Winter's mother's troupe and co-founded the Mid American Dance Company in St. Louis. His father has English ancestry and his mother is Jewish, of Ukrainian Jewish descent. His family wasnâÂÂt observant with their Judaism although he went to Jewish summer camp and learned Yiddish through his grandmother.
Winter received training in dance as a child. When he was five, his family moved to Missouri, where his father ran the Mid-American Dance Company (later, Modern American Dance Company), while his mother taught dance at Washington University in St. Louis. The two divorced in 1973.
In 1978, Winter moved to the New York City area, where he and his mother lived in Montclair, New Jersey. During this time Winter began performing as an actor on and off Broadway, commuting into New York City. He reports his experience in New Jersey as being positive.
In 1983, after graduating from Montclair High School, Winter was accepted into the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. While at NYU, he met fellow aspiring filmmaker Tom Stern. The two collaborated on a number of 16 mm short films.
As an actor, Winter spent many years on Broadway with supporting roles in productions of The King and I, with Yul Brynner, Peter Pan, with Sandy Duncan, and the American premiere of Simon Gray's Close of Play at the Manhattan Theatre Club, directed by Lynne Meadow.
Winter dropped out of NYU film school before his senior year and moved to Hollywood, where he began to write and direct a number of short films and music videos. Winter continued to find work as an actor, making his feature film acting debut in the 1985 film Death Wish 3. He would go on to have notable roles in such big productions as The Lost Boys (1987) and Rosalie Goes Shopping (1989)
In 1989, Winter found international success when he co-starred with Keanu Reeves, playing William "Bill" S. Preston Esq. in the smash-hit comedy Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, a role he reprised in its 1991 sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.
Following the success of Bill & Ted, Winter and creative collaborators Tom Stern and Tim Burns were hired to develop a sketch comedy show for MTV. The result, 1991's The Idiot Box, was a hit for the network in its first season. Winter, Stern and Burns declined an offer to make a second season of the Idiot Box and instead accepted a $12 million deal from 20th Century Fox with Winter and Stern jointly making their feature film directorial debut and Winter starring in the 1993 science-fiction comedy Freaked. The film was never widely released, despite positive reviews from The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly. It has since become a cult favorite, with a global re-release in 2025, with the Idiot Box being re-released at the same time.
Winter spent the next several years in London, directing award-winning TV commercials and music videos around the world. He returned to feature films in 1999, when he wrote and directed the psychological thriller Fever which starred Henry Thomas in the lead role. The film was shown at film festivals worldwide, including Official Selection in the Director's Fortnight at Cannes. The New York Daily News called the film "a claustrophobic mind bender. Winter sustains an aura of creepiness worthy of Roman Polanski." In the New York Times, AO Scott praised the film as "Pure Hitchcockian panic. An arresting example of what a talented filmmaker can accomplish with the sparest of means."
In 2007, Winter directed and acted in the of the hit Cartoon Network series Ben 10, which aired on Cartoon Network in November 2007 and garnered the highest ratings in the channel's history. He also directed its sequel, ', which aired on Cartoon Network in November 2009 and captured over 16 million viewers in its premiere weekend. In 2010, he was attached to direct a 3D-remake of the 1987 horror film The Gate, which was scheduled for release in 2011 but the film was never made.
In 2011, Winter formed his company, Trouper Productions, to service his directing work. Winter's 2012 VH1 rock doc Downloaded earned worldwide critical acclaim at theatrical and festival screenings. Winter's multiple award-winning 2015 documentary Deep Web had its world premiere at SXSW and a broadcast premiere in the U.S. on the Epix network alongside a global festival tour. The film went wide in September 2015, opening as the #1 documentary on iTunes.
In 2013, he featured in the thriller Grand Piano, starring Elijah Wood and John Cusack, in his first major feature film role after 20 years.
In 2016, Winter released a short documentary entitled Relatively Free about journalist Barrett Brown's release from prison. This was followed in 2017 by another short documentary, Trump's Lobby
In 2018, Winter released two documentaries; multiple award-winner The Panama Papers, executive produced by Laura Poitras, about the largest global corruption scandal in history, and the journalists who worked in secret and at considerable risk to break the story. And ', which premiered in Los Angeles on November 16, 2018. In July 2015, Winter began work on a biographical documentary of the rock guitarist and composer Frank Zappa. The Zappa Family Trust publicly gave its approval to Winter's plans for the film. Released on November 27, 2020, Zappa was the first documentary with access to his archives, and was the highest funded documentary in crowdfunding history, via Kickstarter. The film was a Critics Pick in the New York Times, and nominated for Best Music Documentary by the Critics Choice Awards.
In 2020, Winter also released his feature documentary, Showbiz Kids, which premiered on HBO to widespread praise, garnering a Critics Choice nomination for Best Score by Tweedy.
In April 2011, Winter's Bill & Ted co-star Keanu Reeves confirmed that a third installment of the film series was under way; the film was in development for most of the 2010s. Winter returned as Bill Preston in the film, Bill & Ted Face the Music, which was released on August 28, 2020; as the number one movie in North America and several countries internationally, with Reeves describing the plot as, "Basically, they're supposed to write a song to save the world and they haven't done that." In January 2024, Alex hinted about a possibility of a 4th film "Bill & Ted 4".
WinterâÂÂs feature documentary The YouTube Effect, was produced in 2022 by Winter and his company, Trouper Productions, in partnership with Gale Anne Hurd and Glen Zipper. The film premiered at Tribeca in June 2022, completed a sold-out theatrical run in July 2023, and was released worldwide on digital from Drafthouse Films on August 8, 2023.
In 2024, Winter produced and co-starred in the gonzo horror-comedy Destroy All Neighbors which premiered on Shudder and in limited theaters in January, 2024, and Absolute Dominion from director Lexi Alexander.
Winter produced, directed and co-starred in the feature film Adulthood, starring Josh Gad and Kaya Scodelario, which opened in theaters and digitally, in the fall of 2025, to critical acclaim, following a world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and garnering a nomination for Best Independent Film at the 2026 Saturn Awards.
Winter recently returned to Broadway, co-starring with Keanu Reeves in the hit revival of Waiting For Godot, directed by Jamie Lloyd.
Winter was married to Sonya Dawson, with whom he had a son, born in 1998. The couple later divorced. In 2010, he married Ramsey Ann Naito. They have two children. Winter maintains dual British and American citizenship.
In 2018, Winter revealed that he suffered "intense and prolonged" child sexual abuse at the hands of an older man while acting on Broadway. Winter refused to name his abuser, stating he is deceased. He has said that he experienced PTSD due to the abuse, saying, "I had extreme PTSD for many, many years."
Winter began devoting a lot of his attention to the internet in the 1980's. Winter liked the idea of large numbers of anonymous users discussing a variety of topics in an anonymous space. "I found that really striking then. And it seemed liked the beginning of something." He has criticized media companies and news outlets for exaggerating how many people used Napster for digital piracy.
Winter's interest in technology, the Internet and privacy inspired him to make his celebrated documentaries about the rise of global movements online. In 2015, Winter gave a popular Ted talk about the need for greater privacy and security in the digital age, in the face of powerful tech companies.
In response to the political activities of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, in February 2025, Winter helped amplify peaceful Tesla Takedown protests outside of Tesla showrooms around the world. He has stated that the intention was to be anti-Elon Musk and not Tesla. Winter, an avid electric vehicle owner, called Musk a âÂÂtoxic figureheadâ for the company and had a goal for Tesla to part ways with Musk as well as a desire to help educate the public about Musk's nefarious activities with DOGE and to motivate people to protest.
In September 2025, Winter signed an open pledge with Film Workers for Palestine pledging not to work with Israeli film institutions "that are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people."