Omar Epps

A casting call for a Harlem teenager who could hold the screen opposite Tupac Shakur put him in Juice at 18. Director Ernest Dickerson gave both actors room to freestyle their scenes, and the result was a debut that felt less like acting and more like two guys from Brooklyn figuring it out in real time.

The athletic build kept the roles coming. He replaced Wesley Snipes in Major League II, ran track in John Singleton's Higher Learning, and played basketball opposite Sanaa Lathan in Love & Basketball. That last one, produced by Spike Lee and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, became a cult classic in Black cinema. He was dating Lathan at the time and they hid the relationship from the director during production. The rom-com chemistry wasn't hard to fake.

Eight seasons as Dr. Eric Foreman on House M.D. did something his film career couldn't: it made him a fixture. He won three NAACP Image Awards for the role and became one of the most GIF'd actors on the internet, though he didn't set out to be a meme.

Post-House, the work hasn't stopped, but it's shifted. He led ABC's Resurrection for two seasons before it got cancelled, did three seasons on USA's Shooter, and landed in Starz's Power Book III: Raising Kanan as Kanan's biological father. He co-wrote a short film with his cousin 2 Chainz that premiered at the Atlanta Film Festival. The trajectory isn't decline, it's durability. He's not chasing prestige projects or reinventing himself every three years. He just keeps showing up.

Four days. That's how much time he spent with his biological father growing up. His mother, an elementary school principal, raised him across three Brooklyn neighborhoods. He wrote about the whole thing in a 2018 memoir called From Fatherless to Fatherhood, which is exactly as earnest as the title suggests.

He married Keisha Spivey from the R&B group Total in 2006. They'd briefly dated in 1992, split, and reconnected years later. His explanation for why the marriage works: "We took breaking up off the table." He attended LaGuardia High School alongside Marlon and Shawn Wayans. The friendship stuck. He co-produced the theme song for The Wayans Brothers sitcom, and decades later they're developing a comedy together.