Part of Lost featuring Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, Josh Holloway, Jorge Garcia, and Terry O'Quinn.
Rise to Fame
Playing Rita's abusive ex-husband on Dexter in 2006 was the role that got people paying attention. He'd been grinding through small parts since the late 1980s (yes, that's him beating up The Dude in The Big Lebowski), but Bennett put him on the map for TV casting directors. Then 2009 happened: he landed Jacob in Lost and Lucifer in Supernatural simultaneously. Eric Kripke didn't even make him audition for Lucifer. He just got the call.
In the Spotlight
His genre fanbase is devoted, but Pellegrino is one of the more polarizing figures on genre TV's convention circuit. He's an Objectivist who co-founded the American Capitalist Party, has around 50,000 tweets debating politics and philosophy, and signed an open letter criticizing Jonathan Glazer's Gaza Oscar speech. He describes himself as a "very controversial social media figure." He's working with Supernatural creator Eric Kripke again on Vought Rising, the The Boys prequel. Apparently playing the devil doesn't close every door.
Side Notes
He thought he was Italian-American his entire life. An ancestry.com DNA test changed that: no Italian ancestry at all. He posted on Twitter asking Supernatural fans to help identify his biological father. They found him in under an hour: a man named Gerry, of German descent. The discovery came with five siblings he'd never met. His wife Tracy runs Playhouse Paris, a Meisner acting school in France. He has said he originally wanted to be a marine biologist.