Acting
Mar 11, 1960
Detroit, Michigan, USA
Courtney B. Vance
Acting
Biography
Courtney Bernard Vance (born March 12, 1960) is an American actor. Vance started his career on the Broadway stage in the original productions of August Wilson's Fences in 1985, John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation in 1990 and Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy in 2013 for which he won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. He is known for his roles in films such as Hamburger Hill (1987), The Hunt for Red October (1990), The Preacher's Wife (1996), Cookie's Fortune (1999), Terminator Genisys (2015), and Isle of Dogs (2018). Vance is also known for work on television on shows such as Law & Order: Criminal Intent, where he portrayed Assistant District Attorney Ron Carver. He also guest-starred on Law & Order, Picket Fences, The Closer, Revenge, Scandal, and Masters of Sex. He won acclaim for his portrayal of Johnnie Cochran in the FX limited series The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story (2016) for which he received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. He recently appeared in the HBO television film, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017), National Geographic's limited series Genius: Aretha (2020), and the HBO drama series Lovecraft Country (2020) the latter of which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. He has been married to actress Angela Bassett since 1997. Vance is on the Board of Directors for The Actors Center in New York City, and is an active supporter of Boys & Girls Clubs of America. In 2019, Vance was appointed as the President of the Screen Actors Guild Foundation.
Feature Films (64)
Memorial: Letters from American Soldiers is a 1991 American short documentary film directed by Bill Couturié. It shows footage from World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War, overlaid with readings of letters from US troops fighting in each war. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
Memorial: Letters from American Soldiers
A new technologically-superior Soviet nuclear sub, the Red October, is heading for the U.S. coast under the command of Captain Marko Ramius. The American government thinks Ramius is planning to attack. Lone CIA analyst Jack Ryan has a different idea: he thinks Ramius is planning to defect, but he has only a few hours to find him and prove it - because the entire Russian naval and air commands are trying to find Ramius, too. The hunt is on!
The Hunt for Red October
A young Hutterite boy must marry his late brother's wife who comes from outside the community.
Holy Matrimony
The men of Bravo Company are facing a battle that's all uphill… up Hamburger Hill. Fourteen war-weary soldiers are battling for a mud-covered mound of earth so named because it chews up soldiers like chopped meat. They are fighting for their country, their fellow soldiers and their lives. War is hell, but this is worse. Hamburger Hill tells it the way it was, the way it really was. It's a raw, gritty and totally unrelenting dramatic depiction of one of the fiercest battles of America's bloodiest war. This happened. Hamburger Hill - war at its worst, men at their best.
Hamburger Hill
A disgraced FBI agent with a drinking problem joins nine other troubled law enforcement officers at an isolated detox clinic in the wilds of Wyoming. But the therapeutic sanctuary becomes a nightmarish hellhole when a major snowstorm cuts off the clinic from the outside world and enables a killer on the inside to get busy.
D-Tox
Television & Series (37)
Principal Steven Harper runs Winslow High School as best as he can while dealing with the demands of the faculty, the students and their parents.
Boston Public
In cases ripped from the headlines, police investigate serious and often deadly crimes, weighing the evidence and questioning the suspects until someone is taken into custody. The district attorney's office then builds a case to convict the perpetrator by proving the person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Working together, these expert teams navigate all sides of the complex criminal justice system to make New York a safer place.
Law & Order
thirtysomething is an American television drama about a group of baby boomers in their late thirties.
thirtysomething
ABC Daytime's morning chatfest, currently featuring Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, Sara Haines, Alyssa Farah Griffin, and Ana Navarro discussing the most exciting events of the day. Hot topics in the news, the best experts in their field, celebrity interviews and general entertainment are all part of The View.
The View
Any Day Now is an American drama series that aired on the Lifetime network from 1998 to 2002. The show stars Annie Potts and Lorraine Toussaint as best friends of different races who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960s during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement. In every episode, contemporary storylines are interwoven with a storyline from their shared past.
