Bill Duke

Black performer-director-writer whose work ranges from primetime TV and film to theater and literature. Duke began his film acting career in Michael Schultz's boisterous comedy "Car Wash" (1976), shortly after he started writing for the TV series "Good Times." A prolific TV director with scores of primetime episodes to his credit, including "Knots Landing," "Falcon Crest," "Hill Street Blues," "Spenser: For Hire," "A Man Called Hawk," "City of Angels," "New York Undercover" and the miniseries "Miracle's Boys," he won acclaim for his award-winning PBS film "The Killing Floor" (1984), about WWI stockyard workers, and "The Meeting" (1989), about a hypothetical encounter between Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

Duke's first theatrical feature, "A Rage in Harlem" (1991), based on a Chester Himes crime novel, was selected as an official entry in competition at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. As an actor, he has turned in memorable performances as the villainous gay pimp in "American Gigolo" (1980), Arnold Schwarzenegger's comrade in "Commando" (1985) and "Predator" (1987), and the heavy in "Bird on a Wire" (1990). As his film credits--when not playing bad guys Duke specialized in menacing law enforcement agents--seemed to multiply exponentially, some of the more memorable films on his resume included "Menace II Society" (1993), "Payback" (1999), "The Limey" (1999), "Exit Wounds" (2001) and "Red Dragon" (2002). Duke also began reappearing on the small screen, playing Carla Gugino's colleague Amos Andrews in the critically beloved but short-lived ABC series "Karen Sisco" (2004) based on the Elmore Leonard character from the 1998 film "Out of Sight," and a recurring role as Capt. Bob Parish on the slick MTV-style NBC cop drama "Fastlane" (2002-2003), a series which he also directed. Duke got one of his larger roles as the drug kingpin Levar in director Jim Sheridan's urban drama "Get Rich Or Die Tryin'" (2005) based on the real life of star Curtis "50 Cent" Johnson.