Happy Friday! Today’s Famous Friday is highlighting the actor Giancarlo Esposito. He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark on April 26, 1958, to an Italian father and African American mother.
Esposito began acting at age seven and his Broadway debut in 1968 was in the musical Maggie Flynn. He also earned a 2 year degree in radio and television communications from Elizabeth Seton College in New York City.
Giancarlo Esposito is best known for his role in the television series Breaking Bad, as the character Gus Fring. Besides this, he has been a part of a plethora of television series and films, including The Mandalorian, Once Upon a Time, and The Jungle Book (2016).
Esposito has been nominated for and won a myriad of awards. This includes nominations from Primetime Emmy Awards and Screen Actors Guild Awards, and winning Critics Choice Awards’ Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. He also won the TV Icon Award in 2022!
During his career, Esposito found he was stereotypically casted as a criminal or gangster. Tired of being confined to negative roles, he experimented with portraying characters of different ethnicities. He has had two roles as specifically Multiracial characters: an FBI agent in a TV crime drama (a role he reprised for a movie later made) and Sergeant Paul Gigante in a TV comedy. Giancarlo Esposito’s presence and success in the entertainment industry has paved the way for other multiracial actors to gain roles as protagonists and positive characters, as well as provide greater representation for the multiracial community in the entertainment industry!
Madelyn Rempel
Project RACE Teens, President
Photo Credit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giancarlo_Esposito