Featured Image Credit: NBC / YouTube
Topics: TV and Film, The Office, US News
Brenna Cooper
It's been over a decade since the American version of The Office left our screens for good, however, fans are still learning new things about the series.
Set in the town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, the comings and goings of the Dunder Mifflin employees had been a huge success since its premiere in 2005, largely thanks to the Steve Carell's eccentric and often embarrassing antics as boss Michael Scott.
However, many fans would argue that it was the performances from supporting cast members which allowed the show's main characters (played by Rainn Wilson, John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer) to shine.
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One of the most enigmatic characters of the series was Creed Bratton, played by none other than... Creed Bratton.
Bratton used his real life name to play his The Office counterpart, who was known for his hilarious one-liners, shady past and potential dodgy dealings.
It turns out that Bratton himself has also led a pretty interesting life, with the 81-year-old actor previously having a career as a musician.
Back in the 1960s, Bratton was a member of a rock band called The Grass Roots, playing the guitar and singing for the group from 1967. His time in the band would however be short lived, as he was asked to leave in 1969 after a disastrous performance where he was reportedly 'too high' to play his instrument.
Unphased by the setback, Bratton would go on to record several albums before pivoting to acting.
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The move would allow for Bratton's greatest creative project to date, when he played a fictionalised version of himself in The Office.
Working at Dunder Mifflin as head of quality control, Creed was shown to be apathetic towards his job, being the reason an x-rated watermark ended up on several boxes of paper, and leading a very colourful life.
In fact, one Redditor went as far as compiling a non-exhaustive list of the crimes he committed throughout the series, and it turns out that he has quite the rapsheet. Honourable mentions include theft, flashing people, joining cults and selling drugs.
One episode revealed that he'd even 'stolen' the identity of Creed Bratton and had been born as William Charles Schneider, which is also Bratton's real life birth name.
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Talk about life imitating art!
Creed's character even had a pretty rock'n'roll ending in the series, with the finale revealing he had faked his own death over being wanted by police for charges of dealing drugs, trafficking endangered animal meats, and stealing LSD while as a member of, you guessed it, The Grass Roots.
While we seriously doubt Bratton's actual life was as wild as his fictional counterpart's, he's certainly led an interesting one, with the actor giving a rather poetic outlook on living in a recent interview with TribLive.
"I believe you just do what you are," he said. "You find the thing that makes you, that fills you up with light, that thing that fills you up with light, that you go, hell yeah, this is what I got to do. And you do that."