Andre Braugher Biography

ANDRE BRAUGHER

Date of Birth: July 1, 1962

Chicago, Illinois native Andre Braugher graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. and a M.F.A from Julliard. He took up acting to meet girls but later changed his major to acting after getting a taste for it in a production of Hamlet. His first paying acting job was for the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival.

Braugher has performed on stage with the New York Shakespeare Festival in Much Ado about Nothing, King John, and Henry V for which he received an Obie award. He also performed at the Joseph Papp's Public Theatre, the Folger Shakespeare Festival, and The Philadelphia Drama Guild.

Braugher got his first gig as a detective on a T.V. film called Kojak: Fatal Flaw (1989). The film was so successful that two sequels and a series followed. Braugher and his character, Detective Winston Blake, returned in all of them.

While he was working on these projects, he was offered the opportunity to be cast in the 1989 Civil War film Glory. The film was a hit, winning countless awards, including three Oscars.

After the film, Braugher returned to television working on such TV films as the civil rights drama Simple Justice, and in the title role in Cable TV's The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson.

Modest and retiring in real life, Braugher achieved stardom as the verbose, intense, overbearing Detective Frank Pembleton on the 1990's TV series Homicide: Life on the Street. Ironically, his audition for the role went badly and he didn't really click with the producers until he tossed away the script.

During the '90s however, Braugher tried his hand again at film. Some of his credits include Striking Distance (1993), Primal Fear (1996), City of Angels (1989) and Frequency (2000). In the new millenium, he's played recurring roles in series such as Gideon's Crossing, Hack, The Jury and Thief, and played a role in the big budget disaster remake, Poseidon (2006). He was slated for Samuel L. Jackson's role in Sphere, but pulled out to spend more time with his family.

Most recently, Andre lent his voice to Al Granger in Spirit Untamed(2021), alongside Julianne Moore and Jake Gyllenhaal.

He is married to his Homicide on-screen wife Ami Brabson, has three children, and lives in Baltimore.

Filmography: