Who played Dr. Peter Silberman in The Terminator?

Earl Boen played Dr. Peter Silberman in The Terminator.

Silberman is the skeptical criminal psychologist who interviews Kyle Reese after police arrest him. Reese describes a future war, time travel, and machines hunting Sarah Connor, but Silberman treats the account as delusional. This scene helps establish how extraordinary the film’s central threat sounds to people in 1984.

Boen returned as Silberman in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, making the character one of the franchise’s recurring human witnesses. The character’s role changes across the films as he encounters more evidence that the Terminators and the future war are real.

The part is sometimes confused with other supporting roles in the first film. Lance Henriksen played Detective Vukovich, while Paul Winfield played Lieutenant Ed Traxler. Michael Biehn played Kyle Reese, the resistance fighter whose testimony Silberman initially dismisses.