Alexander Winter, born in 1965 in London, England, is a British-born American actor and filmmaker best known for his role as Bill S. Preston, Esq., in the cult-classic Bill & Ted film series: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991), and Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020). He also had a memorable early role as the vampire Marko in The Lost Boys (1987) and made a splash as co-writer, co-director, and star of the offbeat cult film Freaked (1993).

Winter has carved out a respected second career as a documentary filmmaker, particularly known for exploring topics related to technology and digital culture in the 2010s. His documentary work includes Downloaded (2013), which chronicles the rise and fall of Napster, and The Panama Papers (2018), among others.

Raised in a family immersed in the arts—his mother, Gregg Mayer, was a New York-born dancer who trained with Martha Graham, and his father, Ross Albert Winter, an Australian dancer—he was exposed to creative disciplines from a young age. After the family moved to Missouri, his parents established strong roots in the dance world, though they later divorced in 1973.

Winter has Jewish ancestry on his mother’s side and grew up attending Jewish summer camp, even learning some Yiddish from his grandmother, despite the family not being religiously observant.

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