Shemar Franklin Moore (born April 20, 1970) is an Emmy Award-winning American actor and former male fashion model with Irene Marie Models, best known for his role as Malcolm Winters on The Young and the Restless, which he originally played from 1994 to 2002, and as the third permanent host of the long-running Soul Train series, from 1999 to 2003. Currently, he plays FBI Special Agent Derek Morgan on CBS's hit drama, Criminal Minds.

Early years

Moore's father, Sherrod Moore, is of African American descent and his mother, Marilyn Wilson-Moore, is Dutch. As a child, Moore lived in the Netherlands with his mother until he was 5 years old. The first language he learned was Dutch, because his mother only spoke Dutch to him. When he was five or six years old, he learned to speak English. His mother, who had a degree in mathematics, worked as a teacher in Bahrain for several years. He lived for a short time in his mother's hometown of Boston when they returned to the U.S. They moved to Chico, California, in the late 1970s, where his mother worked at a clinic, before later moving to Palo Alto, California.www.mostbeautifulman.com/actors/shemarmoore/bio.shtml