Hill Harper
Harper signing copies of his book Letters to a Young Brother
Birth name	Francis Harper<ref name="TVGbio" />
Born	May 17 1966 (1966--) (age 41) Iowa City, Iowa, U.S.A.
Died
Other name(s)	F. Hill Harper
Awards

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

Biography

Early life

Harper was born in Iowa City, Iowa<ref name="TVGbio" /> to Henry Harper, a psychiatrist, and Marilyn Hill, who was one of the first practicing African-American anesthesiologists in the United States.^[2][3] Acting since the age of 7, Harper graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts degree and graduated with a J.D. (cum laude) from Harvard Law School,where he earned his degree in law and Master of Public Administration. 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 African-American theater troupes in the country.

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 , the second spin-off from the very successful 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.

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.^{Stated in interview with Tom Joyner of Tom Joyner morning show August 2007}

Filmography

• "Mama, I Want to Sing!" (2008) - Jeff Andrews
• This Is Not a Test (2007)
• The Breed (2006) - Noah
• Constellation (2005) - Errol Hickman
• Lackawanna Blues (2005) - Ruben, Jr. (Adult)
• Love, Sex, & Eating the Bones (2004)
• The Sopranos (2004) - Stokley Davenport M.D.
• (2004) - Dr. Sheldon Hawkes
• (2004) - Kelvin Chadway
• The Handler (2003) - Darnell
• The Visit (2000) - Alex Waters
• The Skulls (2000) - Will Beckford
• Slaves of Hollywood (1999) - Fisher
• In Too Deep (1999)
• Park Day (1998)
• Hav Plenty (1998)
• He Got Game (1998) - Coleman 'Booger' Sykes
• Beloved (1998) - Halle
• The Nephew (1998) - Chad Egan-Washington
• Steel (1997) - Slats
• Get on the Bus (1996) - Xavier
• (1994) - Peter

References

Loving Jezebel (1999)

External links

• Hill Harper's book Letters to a Young Brother
• Hill Harper's foundation Manifest Your Destiny Foundation
• Hill Harper Bio at CBS - CSI: NY
• Hill Harper's Bio
• Hill Harper at the Internet Movie Database