Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito (born
April 26,
1958) is a
Danish-
American film and television actor.
Early life
Esposito was born in
Denmark to an
Italian father who worked as a stagehand and carpenter, and an
African-American mother who was an
opera and nightclub singer.
[Giancarlo Esposito Biography (1958-)] Esposito lived in
Europe,
New York, and
Cleveland until the family settled in
Manhattan when he was six. At the age of 10 he made his
Broadway debut in the short-lived
Maggie Flynn.
Career
Throughout most of the 1980s, Esposito appeared in small roles in films such as
Maximum Overdrive,
King of New York, and
Trading Places and TV shows such as
Miami Vice and
Spenser: For Hire. In 1988, he landed his breakout role as a college student labeled as a "wannabe" by his peers in director
Spike Lee's film
School Daze. Over the next four years, Esposito and Lee collaborated on three other movies:
Do the Right Thing,
Mo' Better Blues, and
Malcolm X. He also appeared in
Reckless with
Mia Farrow.
