| Omar Epps |
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| Born |
Omar Hashim Epps
July 23, 1973 (1973-07-23) (age 35)
Brooklyn, New York |
| Spouse(s) |
Yusra Salama (1 girl) Keisha Spivey (1 girl, 1 boy) |
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Omar Hashim Epps (born July 23, 1973) is an American actor and musician. He is famous for his movies Higher Learning, Love and Basketball, In Too Deep, and The Wood, and as his small role in Scream 2. Since 2004, he has played the role of Dr. Eric Foreman on the Fox medical drama series House.
Biography
Epps was born in Brooklyn, New York to a single mother who was a school principal.1 Before he started acting, he belonged to a rap group called Wolfpak which he formed with his brother in 1991. He began writing screenplays at the age of ten and attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.
Omar has a daughter Aiyanna Yasmine from his first marriage to Yusra Salama.23 Epps married Keisha Spivey from the R&B group Total in 2006. They live in California with daughter K'marie (born in July 2004) and son Amir (born in December 2007).
Career
Early in Omar's career, he was most often cast in the roles of troubled teens and/or athletes. Epps made his film debut with rapper Tupac Shakur as the star of cinematographer Ernest Dickerson's directorial film debut Juice. The film is the violent and tragic story of four young men growing up in Harlem. Epps followed up his performance in Juice as a running back in the college football drama The Program alongside James Caan.
The following year, he switched to baseball as co-star of Major League II, taking over the role of Willie Mays Hayes from originator Wesley Snipes. His next athletic endeavor was playing a track and field star in John Singleton's Higher Learning, a look at the politics and racial tensions of college life.
Omar landed a role on the hit TV drama ER for several episodes portraying Dr. Dennis Gant, a troubled surgical intern. After his television work on ER, Epps returned to the big screen in 1997 with a brief turn as a giddy moviegoer on a date with a woman played by Jada Pinkett, who ends up an early victim of a psycho slasher in the blockbuster sequel Scream 2. Also in 1997 Epps was the star of the fact-based HBO movie First Time Felon a movie he produced. Epps played a small-time criminal who goes through Chicago's boot camp reform system and undertakes a heroic flood rescue, only to then be faced with the adjustment of re-entering society with the mark of ex-con. In 1999 Epps was cast as Linc in The Mod Squad. The feature adaptation of the dated TV series had Epps in attractive but uncomfortable and decidedly unfashionable tight pants, a subject frequently raised by the actor in interviews promoting the film.
While The Mod Squad proved a critical and box office bust, Epps later 1999 effort The Wood offered him a serious and multi-dimensional role. Following a group of middle-class African-Americans from youth to adulthood, The Wood, the debut effort from director-screenwriter Rick Fumuyiwa, co-starred Richard T. Jones and Taye Diggs and received a push from co-producers MTV Films that ensured turnout of a sizable youth audience. Also in 1999, Epps was featured alongside Stanley Tucci and LL Cool J, playing an undercover detective who finds himself dangerously caught up in the illegal goings-on he is investigating in In Too Deep. 1999 also saw him lens the 1950s set murder mystery When Willows Touch, with James Earl Jones and Jada Pinkett Smith.
In 2000 Epps starred in Love and Basketball, featuring Alfre Woodard & Sanaa Lathan. He portrayed Quincy, the NBA hopeful who has a stormy relationship with an equally adept female basketball star Monica (Sanaa Lathan). The actor held supporting roles in a series of films including Dracula 2000, Big Trouble, and the telepic Conviction. In 2004, Epps landed the role of drug-dealer-turned-prizefighter Luther Shaw who falls under the tutelage of boxing promoter Jackie Kallen (Meg Ryan) in the biopic Against the Ropes.
Epps was a character in the video game Def Jam Fight for NY in 2004.
Epps returned to television medical drama with his role as Dr. Eric Foreman on the American television series House alongside Hugh Laurie, Lisa Edelstein, Robert Sean Leonard, Jennifer Morrison & Jesse Spencer. House first aired in 2004. The role earned him a NAACP Image Award in 2007 for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.
Filmography
References
External links
