Joe Spano
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| Joe Spano | |
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| Born | Joseph Peter Spano July 7, 1946 San Francisco, California, USA |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Spouse(s) | Joan Zerrien (1980-present) |
Joseph Peter Spano (born July 7, 1946) is an American actor who was formerly perhaps best known for his Emmy Award nominated role as Lt. Henry Goldblume on Hill Street Blues but who is now recognized for his work in NCIS.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Personal life
He was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Virginia Jean (née Carpenter) and Vincent Dante Spano, a physician.[1] He attended Archbishop Riordan High School in San Francisco and was graduated from the University of California-Berkeley, where he gave up plans to major in pre-med in favor of acting. He and his wife Joan, a therapist, adopted and raised two daughters.[2]
He is a past Director and current e-mail coordinator of the Southern California chapter of Families with Children from China and a founding, past board member of Half the Sky Foundation, which brings early childhood development training and infant nurturing programs to orphanages in China.[3]
[edit] Career
He was a member of the San Francisco improv group The Wing, and in college debuted as Paris in a production of "Romeo and Juliet" in 1967. In 1968 and he helped found the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, appearing in its first first production, and stayed with the company for 10 years. He moved to Hollywood in the late 1970s, landing guest shots on TV and bit roles in American Graffiti (1973) and The Enforcer (1976/I).
In Hill Street Blues he played Henry Goldblume during the entire six-year run of the series, first as a detective sergeant, later as a lieutenant. Goldblume was one of Hill Street Precinct Captain Frank Furillo's trusted junior officers, serving at times as a hostage negotiator and gangs relations officer. The character was sympathetic to crime victims, sometimes coming in conflict with his duties as a police officer. Spano was one of many actors appearing through each episode, which typically had several interwoven story lines.
After Hill Street Blues ended, Spano won recurring roles in television police shows Murder One (1995) and NYPD Blue (1993), again as a detective, and has appeared regularly in 27 television movies and 20 television shows like The X-Files, Mercy Point and Amazing Grace. Spano won the Emmy award in 1988 for Best Guest Actor in a Drama Series for a role he played in an episode of Midnight Caller. He has appeared in 27 feature films, including working alongside Tom Hanks in Apollo 13 and Richard Gere and Edward Norton in Primal Fear. His credits are often confused with Australian actor Joseph Spano. They are not related.[4]
He is a veteran stage actor on the east and west coasts. Spano made his Broadway debut in 1992 in the Roundabout Theater revival of Arthur Miller's The Price, with Eli Wallach, which was nominated for a Tony for Best Revival. West coast stage credits include Eduardo Pavlovsky's Potestad, and David Mamet's Speed the Plow and American Buffalo, for which he was awarded an LA Drama Critics Circle Award. At the Rubicon Theater in Ventura he has played General Burgoyne in Shaw's The Devil's Disciple, Greg in A. R. Gurney's Sylvia and Vladimir in Waiting for Godot. He is a member of the Antaeus Theater Company and a founding member of three other theater companies.[5] He played a seductive vampire in the cult musical Dracula: A Musical NIghtmare in a small LA theatre.[6]
[edit] NCIS
He has been a recurring character in NCIS since its first episode, Yankee White, playing FBI Special Agent Tobias Fornell, the gruff, tough counterpart to NCIS' gruff, tough Leroy Jethro Gibbs. The on-screen rapport between the two actors has made Spano much more visible to viewers than his number of actual screen appearances would suggest.
Spano is best known for straight dramatic roles but, in NCIS, has adapted to the comedic/drama crossover that that has made that show famous and improved its ratings year on year through word of mouth reviews, the CBS network and critics being noted for not promoting this show despite its ratings. Spano's character, Fornell, holds rank in the FBI equivalent to that held by the NCIS main character, Gibbs. Thus Spano is given key lines and comic moments as a foil for Gibbs and, in some episodes, equal screentime with the main lead.
Two episodes have used the Fornell's personal life as the main crux of the NCIS episode: one where Fornell's daughter is imperiled and another where Fornell's career is imperilled. In each episode, it is the friendship between Gibbs and Fornell which is invoked in order to involve NCIS in the resolution of an FBI agent's crisis. Further indicating his status on the show, Spano's Fornell was written into the Gibbs backstory, by having Fornell marry Gibbs' ex-wife, linking their private lives as well as their professional lives and further establishing their equivalence of status.
Notable episodes of NCIS, featuring Spano in a prime role, include the Episode 1, Series 1 "Yankee White", Episode 2 of Series 3 "Escaped" as well as episodes titled Seadog, Enigma, Reveille, The Boneyard, Conspiracy Theory, Twilight, Kill Ari: Part 2, Under covers, Frame up, Smoked, Brothers in Arms and Angel of Death, all of which are available for searching on the NCIS pages. Spano continues to appear in Series 5 of NCIS, starting with Identity Crisis about an FBI operation gone wrong.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Joe Spano at the Internet Movie Database
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