Charles S. Dutton

Charles Stanley Dutton was born on January 30, 1951, on the east side of Baltimore, Maryland, where he grew up in the Latrobe Homes public housing project. His father worked as a truck driver, and his parents divorced when Dutton was four years old. He left school before completing middle school and briefly pursued amateur boxing under the nickname "Roc," a shortened form of "Rockhead," a name tied to rock-throwing fights during his childhood.

At age sixteen, in 1967, Dutton was involved in a fight that resulted in a man's death, which Dutton maintained was an act of self-defense against a knife attack. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to five years, beginning his incarceration at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup, Maryland. Released on parole after roughly eighteen to twenty months, he was subsequently arrested on robbery and handgun charges, receiving an additional three-year sentence at the Maryland Penitentiary. A confrontation with a guard extended his time by eight more years. During this second term, Dutton was stabbed by a fellow prisoner and came close to death. He also developed an interest in radical political movements, including the Black Panther Party.

The turn toward acting came during a six-day stretch in solitary confinement, imposed after Dutton refused a work assignment. Permitted to bring one book, he inadvertently selected an anthology of Black playwrights. His engagement with the material led him to petition the warden to establish a drama group for a prison talent show. The warden agreed, on the condition that Dutton return to school. He earned his GED, completed a two-year program at Hagerstown Junior College in Hagerstown, Maryland, and received an Associate of Arts degree in 1976. He was paroled on August 20, 1976. Following his release, he enrolled as a drama major at Towson State University in Towson, Maryland, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1978, and subsequently completed a master's degree in acting at the Yale School of Drama in 1983.

Dutton made his Broadway debut in 1984 in August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, a production that earned him both a Theatre World Award and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play, both in 1985, as well as a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor. He returned to Broadway in 1990 in Wilson's The Piano Lesson, receiving a second Tony nomination for Best Actor. His Broadway work continued into the following decade with an appearance in The Exonerated in 2003, marking a Broadway presence that spanned from 1984 to 2003.

On television, Dutton starred in the FOX comedy series Roc from 1991 to 1994, a role that brought him an NAACP Image Award. He earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for the 1995 television film adaptation of The Piano Lesson. His guest work on The Practice and Without a Trace won him Primetime Emmy Awards in 2002 and 2003, respectively, and he had previously received an Emmy nomination in 1999 for a guest role in the HBO prison drama Oz, which also generated an NAACP Image Award nomination. In 2000, Dutton directed the HBO miniseries The Corner, an adaptation of the book by David Simon and Ed Burns set in the streets of East Baltimore where Dutton himself had grown up. The miniseries won multiple Emmy Awards, including Best Miniseries, and Dutton received an Emmy for his direction. He also co-starred in the short-lived CBS science fiction series Threshold in 2005 and appeared in the 2003 television film D.C. Sniper: 23 Days of Fear as Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose.

Dutton's film work includes appearances in Alien 3 (1992), Menace II Society (1993), A Time to Kill (1996), Black Dog (1998), Cookie's Fortune (1999), and Gothika (2003), among others. He played Leroy Brown in Crocodile Dundee II in 1988 and co-starred in Rudy in 1993. In 2007, HBO announced an agreement with Dutton to develop, direct, and star in projects for the network, and he appeared that same year in the film Honeydripper.