Giancarlo Esposito

Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito (born April 26, 1958) is an award-winning Italian-American film and television actor and director best known for his roles in such films as Do the Right Thing, The Usual Suspects and King of New York, and for his portrayal of Gustavo "Gus" Fring on the AMC series Breaking Bad for which he won the Best Supporting Actor in a Drama award at the 2012 Critics' Choice Television Awards. He has been nominated for an Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series award at the 2012 Primetime Emmy Awards. He currently appears in the ABC series Once Upon a Time, as the Evil Queen's magic mirror and "Daily Mirror" reporter Sidney. He has more recently appeared in the new 2012 NBC fall drama "Revolution" as the bounty hunter of the Militia.

Early Life
Esposito was born in Copenhagen, Denmark to an Italian father and an African American mother. His mother was an opera and nightclub singer from Alabama, who once appeared on the same bill as Josephine Baker. His father was from Naples, and worked as a stagehand and carpenter. Because Italian citizenship is based upon the principle of jus sanguinis, Esposito is an Italian citizen. Esposito lived in Europe until the family settled in Manhattan when he was six.

Career
Esposito made his Broadway debut (1966) at age eight playing a slave child opposite Shirley Jones in the short-lived Maggie Flynn. He did not take offense at the play's racial politics then; he was thrilled. "I had a solo and everything."[6] During the 1980s Esposito appeared in films such as Maximum Overdrive, King of New York, and Trading Places and TV shows such as Miami Vice and Spenser: For Hire. He played J.C. Pierce, a cadet in the 1981 movie Taps. In 1988 he landed his breakout role as the leader ('Dean Big Brother Almighty') of the black fraternity "Gamma Phi Gamma" 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. During the 1990s Esposito appeared in the acclaimed indie films Night on Earth, Fresh and Smoke, as well as its sequel Blue in the Face. He also appeared in the mainstream film Reckless with Mia Farrow and Waiting to Exhale starring Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett. Esposito is known for his portrayal of FBI agent Mike Giardello on the TV crime drama Homicide: Life on the Street. That role reflected both his black and Italian heritage. He played this role from 1998 until the series' cancellation. The character's father Al is portrayed as subject to colorism, something Esposito's character practiced in School Daze. Another biracial role was Sergeant Paul Gigante in the television comedy series, Bakersfield P.D. (Fox Broadcasting Company, 1993–1994). In 1997 Esposito played the role of Darryl in Trouble on the Corner and Charlie Dunt in Nothing to Lose. Other TV credits include NYPD Blue, Law & Order, The Practice, New York Undercover, and Fallen Angels: Fearless. Esposito has portrayed drug dealers (Fresh, Breaking Bad, King of New York), cops (The Usual Suspects, Derailed), political radicals (Bob Roberts) and even a demonic version of the Greek God of Sleep Hypnos from another dimension (Monkeybone). He played Cassius Clay, Sr., in Ali and Nuyorican poet Miguel Piñero's friend and collaborator Miguel Algarín in Piñero, both released in 2001. In 2006 Esposito starred in Last Holiday as Senator Dillings, alongside Queen Latifah and Timothy Hutton. Also in 2006, he played an unsympathetic Detective named Esposito in the 2006 film, Hate Crime, written and directed by first-time director/writer Tommy Stovall and starring Seth Peterson, Bruce Davison, Chad Donella, Cindy Pickett, and Brian J. Smith. The film explores homophobia. Esposito played Robert Fuentes, a Miami businessman with shady connections, on the UPN television series South Beach. He has appeared in New Amsterdam and CSI: Miami. He recorded a public service announcement for Deejay Ra's hip hop literacy campaign to encourage reading about Muhammad Ali. In Feel the Noise (2007) he played ex-musician Roberto, the Puerto Rican father of Omarion Grandberry's character, aspiring rap star "Rob". Gospel Hill (2008) was Esposito's directorial debut; he also produced the film and starred in it. He is currently producing his next film Diamond District, set in New York, with Matt Damon rumored to be starring.[citation needed] New York theatre credits for Esposito include The Me Nobody Knows, Lost in the Stars, Seesaw, and Merrily We Roll Along. In 2008 he appeared on Broadway as Gooper in an African American production of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Debbie Allen and starring James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, and Terrence Howard. Between 2009 and 2011, Esposito appeared in seasons 2 through 4 of the AMC drama Breaking Bad, as Gus Fring, the head of a New Mexico-based methamphetamine drug ring and the show's primary antagonist in the third and fourth seasons. Esposito received critical acclaim for this role. As noted above, he won the Best Supporting Actor in a Drama award at the 2012 Critics' Choice Television Awards and has been nominated for an Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series award at the 2012 Primetime Emmy Awards. Esposito appears in Rabbit Hole (2010), with Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart. Esposito appears in the ABC program Once Upon a Time that debuted in the Fall of 2011. He portrays the split role of Sidney, a reporter for The Daily Mirror in the town of Storybrooke, Maine, who in actuality is the Magic Mirror, possessed by The Evil Queen in a parallel fairy tale world. Esposito has also appeared in Community as a guest star for an episode entitled "Digital Estate Planning".