Damon Gupton

Damon Jamal Gupton, born January 4, 1973, in Detroit, Michigan, is an American actor and orchestral conductor. He earned a bachelor's degree in Music Education from the University of Michigan, where he directed a musical ensemble and received the Emerging Artist Award from the university's School of Music, Theatre & Dance Alumni Society. He subsequently trained in drama at the Juilliard School in New York. His conducting studies took him to the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he worked under David Zinman and Murry Sidlin, and later to the National Conducting Institute in Washington, D.C., where he studied with Leonard Slatkin.

Gupton's conducting career includes an American Conducting Fellowship at the Houston Symphony in 2004 and a position as assistant conductor of the Kansas City Symphony in 2006. He served as conductor of the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra on its national tour, with performances at Carnegie Hall, and appeared as a guest conductor with numerous ensembles including the Cincinnati Pops, Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, San Diego Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Princeton Symphony Orchestra, Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, the NHK Orchestra of Tokyo, and the Orquesta Filarmonica de UNAM. Among his conducting honors are Mexico City's third International Eduardo Mata Conducting Competition, the Robert J. Harth Conducting Prize, and the Aspen Conducting Prize. In January 2009, the University of Michigan named him a Presidential Professor.

His screen acting career began with a role in the 2002 drama Unfaithful. He went on to appear in the films The Last Airbender (2010), Whiplash (2014), and La La Land (2016). On television, Gupton held series regular roles as Charles Foster on Deadline, Evrard Velerio on Prime Suspect, and Adam Page on The Divide, the last being a lead role on the AMC drama he joined in September 2012. He co-starred as Detective Cal Brown alongside Wesley Snipes on the NBC series The Player beginning in February 2015, and in December 2015 was cast in the recurring role of psychiatrist Gregg Edwards in the fourth season of Bates Motel. In September 2016, CBS announced his addition to Criminal Minds as SSA Stephen Walker, a special agent in the Behavioral Analysis Unit appearing in the series' twelfth season, a role he departed after one season. He was subsequently cast as Deputy Chief Henderson in the superhero drama series Black Lightning.

In 2012, Gupton appeared on Broadway in Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park, a credit that earned him an AUDELCO nomination for Best Supporting Actor.