Hill Harper

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Hill Harper
Harper signing copies of his book Letters to a Young Brother, 2007
Born	Francis Harper^[1] May 17, 1966 (1966-05-17) (age 42) Iowa City, Iowa, U.S.A.

Hill Harper (born Francis E. Harper;^[1]^[2] May 17, 1966) is an American film, television and stage actor.

1 Biography
2 Filmography
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Harper was born in Iowa City, Iowa, the son of Henry Harper, a psychiatrist, and Marilyn Hill, who was one of the first practicing black anesthesiologists in the United States.^[1]^[3]^[4] Acting since the age of 7, Harper graduated magna cum laude from Brown University (A.B. 1988) and also graduated with a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Master of Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. During his years at Harvard, he was a full-time member of Boston's Black Folks Theater Company, one of the oldest and most acclaimed black theater troupes in the country.

[edit] Career

Harper broke into both film and television in 1993, doing recurring work on the Fox series Married...with Children and making his film debut in the short Confessions of a Dog. He had his first substantial role in a feature in Spike Lee's Get on the Bus (1996), which cast him as a UCLA film student riding a bus to the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. He went on to further demonstrate his versatility in such films as Lee's He Got Game (1998) and Christopher Scott Cherot's Hav Plenty (1997), the latter of which featured him as an egotistical pop-soul singer.

His profile subsequently rose on both the mainstream and independent film circuits, thanks to roles in films ranging from Beloved (1998) to the independent romantic comedy Loving Jezebel (1999) to The Skulls (2000), an entry into the teen thriller/horror genre. Harper also did some of his most acclaimed work in Jordan Walker Pearlman's The Visit (2000), an independent drama in which he starred as a prisoner dying of AIDS who tries to put his life back together. His best-known role to date is that of coroner-turned-crime-scene-investigator Sheldon Hawkes on the American TV show CSI:NY, the second spin-off from the very successful CSI: Crime Scene Investigation franchise.

In 2006, Harper wrote Letters to a Young Brother. He also starred in Geretta Geretta's Whitepaddy, along with Sherilyn Fenn, Lisa Bonet, Debra Wilson, Karen Black and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

[edit] Personal life

Harper graduated magna cum laude from Brown University (A.B. 1988) and also graduated with a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Master of Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is a member of Boston's Black Folk's Theater Company. He is also a good friend of actress Gabrielle Union and presidential hopeful, Barack Obama.^{[citation needed]} ^{Stated in interview with Tom Joyner of Tom Joyner morning show August 2007} (Video of Hill Endorsing Barack Obama and talking about their time at Harvard together. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLoj0IY88jc)

In January, 2008, he participated in a video for Barack Obama produced by Will.I.Am called Yes We Can, he's also member of the Barack Obama's National Finance Committee.^[5]

Harper has noted in interviews that he and costar Gary Sinise have very different political views but get along very well by not discussing those viewpoints with each other.