Damien Leake

Damien Leake is an American actor and masters track and field athlete born on August 12, 1952, in the Bronx, New York City. A cousin of NFL defensive tackle Roger Brown, Leake built a career spanning stage, screen, and television that began in the early 1970s and accumulated approximately 70 motion picture appearances over the following decades.

Leake made his film debut in the 1973 feature Serpico and went on to appear in Death Wish and Apocalypse Now, among other productions. Through the 1980s, he was frequently cast in roles described as a tender, sensitive, half-crazed killer. His Broadway career ran from 1977 to 1984 and included three productions: The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, Whose Life Is It Anyway?, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. Beyond acting, Leake has worked in a range of entertainment-related capacities, including as a singer, dancer, director, musician, composer, musical director, vocal arranger, playwright, stage fight choreographer, and ventriloquist.

On August 28, 1963, eleven days after his eleventh birthday, Leake attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with his parents, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. Following King's assassination on April 4, 1968, Leake began sitting during the playing of the U.S. national anthem as a form of silent protest, a practice he has continued since. The protest nearly resulted in a court-martial while Leake was serving in the Army at Fort Dix. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick's similar protest drew widespread media attention and criticism from then-President Trump.

In addition to his entertainment career, Leake is a competitive masters sprinter. On June 16, 2018, in Grass Valley, California, he set the world M65 record in the 100 meters with a time of 12.31 seconds, wind-assisted at plus 1.3 meters per second.