Giancarlo Esposito is an African-American actor that made his mark playing the Gustavo “Gus” Fring on Breaking and Better Call Saul!
So let’s dive into some unknowns about hise life and career!
- His full name is Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito
- He was born on April 26, 1958
- He is an African-American actor and director
- He has played Gustavo “Gus” Fring on the AMC shows Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul
- A role for which he won the Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series Award at the 2012 Critics’ Choice Television Awards
- He was, also, nominated for an Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series at the 2012 Primetime Emmy Awards
- He is set to star in the upcoming live-action Star Wars series The Mandalorian on Disney+ in 2019
- He has appeared in Spike Lee films such as Do the Right Thing, School Daze, and Mo’ Better Blues
- His feature film appearances include Fresh, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, The Usual Suspects, and King of New York
- He has played Tom Neville in the NBC series Revolution and Sidney Glass / Magic Mirror on ABC’s Once Upon a Time
- He has had roles in two Netflix original series: The Get Down, wherein he portrays Pastor Ramon Cruz, and Dear White People, which he narrates
- He also voiced “The Dentist” in the video game Payday 2
- Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito was born in Copenhagen
- He is the son of Giovanni Esposito, an Italian stagehand and carpenter from Naples
- And Elizabeth Foster, an African American opera and nightclub singer from Alabama
- Esposito was raised in Denmark until the age of six
- Then his family settled in Manhattan, New York
- He attended Elizabeth Seton College in New York
- And earned a two-year degree in radio and television communications
- Esposito married Joy McManigal in 1995
- They later divorced
- He has four daughters
- Esposito made his Broadway debut at age eight
- Playing a slave child opposite Shirley Jones in the short-lived musical Maggie Flynn (1968)
- The musical was set during the New York Draft Riots of 1863
- During the 1980s, Esposito appeared in films such as Taps, Maximum Overdrive, King of New York, and Trading Places
- He also performed in 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
- The film explored color relations at black colleges
- 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
- In 2016, Esposito voiced Akela in the film The Jungle Book, which was directed by Jon Favreau
- Esposito and Favreau would work together once again in the upcoming web series The Mandalorian
- In which Esposito appears in a starring role
While Favreau acts as an executive producer for the series and as its writer
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