Lou Diamond Phillips

Lou Diamond Phillips, born Louis Diamond Upchurch on February 17, 1962, at the U.S. Naval Base Subic Bay in the Philippines, is an American actor, director, and writer. His mother, Lucita Umayam Aranas, was Filipina, and his father, Gerald Amon Upchurch, was an American Marine KC-130 crew chief of Scots-Irish and Cherokee descent. Phillips's father died when he was one year old, after which his mother remarried and the family took the Phillips surname. He was named after U.S. Marine Lou Diamond. Raised in Texas, he graduated from Flour Bluff High School in Corpus Christi in 1980 and later earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama from the University of Texas at Arlington.

Phillips first gained widespread attention in 1987 when he portrayed early rock and roll pioneer Ritchie Valens in the biographical film La Bamba. Before that breakthrough, he appeared in a 1987 episode of Miami Vice titled "Red Tape," playing detective Bobby Diaz. The following year, he co-starred with Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver, playing Angel David Guzman, a cholo gangster who is inspired by his math teacher, Jaime Escalante, to pursue calculus. That performance earned him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male and a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Also in 1988, he joined Emilio Estevez and Kiefer Sutherland in the Western film Young Guns, portraying historical outlaw José Chávez y Chávez, a role he reprised in Young Guns II in 1990. During the filming of the sequel, he suffered a severe injury when a spooked horse bucked him off and dragged him approximately 100 feet with his leg caught in a stirrup, resulting in surgery to repair a right arm broken in four places. Additional film credits from this period include Courage Under Fire (1996), The Big Hit (1998), Brokedown Palace (1999), Che (2008), and The 33 (2015).

In the mid-1990s, Phillips was a vocalist with the Los Angeles-based rock group The Pipefitters. In 1996, he made his Broadway debut in the revival of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's The King and I, taking on the role of King Mongkut of Siam. The performance earned him a Theatre World Award, a Tony Award nomination, and a Drama Desk Award nomination. In 2007, he joined the touring production of Lerner and Loewe's Camelot as King Arthur, beginning with the touring troupe on September 11 of that year. In July 2014, he returned to the role of the King of Siam in Opera Australia's Melbourne production of The King and I, replacing the injured Jason Scott Lee and performing opposite Lisa McCune as Anna Leonowens.

On television, Phillips took on a range of recurring and series-regular roles across multiple decades. He appeared as George Lopez's half-brother in the sitcom George Lopez from 2002 to 2004, and played secret government agent Mark DeSalvo in the first season of 24, opposite Kiefer Sutherland. He portrayed FBI tracker and sniper Ian Edgerton in the series Numb3rs, a character who works as an instructor at the Quantico FBI Academy. He played Colonel Telford in Stargate Universe during its two-season run on Syfy from 2009 to 2011, portraying the would-be commander of the Destiny expedition who is left behind when an accident launches an unsuspecting crew into deep space. Beginning in June 2012, he co-starred in the A&E and later Netflix series Longmire for six seasons, playing Henry Standing Bear, a Native American and longtime friend of the Wyoming sheriff played by Robert Taylor. From 2019 to 2021, he played New York City Police Lieutenant Gil Arroyo on the FOX series Prodigal Son.

Phillips won the second season of the NBC reality series I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, defeating pro wrestler Torrie Wilson. In January 2012, he participated in the Food Network reality series Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off and was announced the winner on January 29, 2012, receiving a Zagat score of 28 out of 30 and winning $50,000 for his charity. He hosted the weekly series An Officer and a Movie from 2011 to 2013 on American Heroes Channel, interviewing members of the U.S. military and intelligence communities about the events that inspired various World War II films. In December 2012, he appeared in Imagine Dragons' music video for "Radioactive," which surpassed one billion views on YouTube. In 2023, he competed in season nine of The Masked Singer as "Mantis," and was eliminated during the "Battle of the Saved" alongside Keenan Allen, who competed as "Gargoyle."

As a writer, Phillips co-wrote the screenplays for Trespasses and Dangerous Touch, and wrote the feature Ambition, both of which he also acted in. In 2019, Aethon Books announced the forthcoming publication of his debut novel, Tinderbox: Soldier of Indira, a science fiction work. He also voiced four episodes of the radio series The Twilight Zone, appearing in volumes 1, 3, 10, and 12, with episodes including "A Kind of a Stopwatch," "The Parallel," "Miniature," and "Long Live Walter Jameson." In 2016, he portrayed serial killer Richard Ramirez in The Night Stalker, and in 2023 he starred opposite Malcolm McDowell in the independently produced comedy thriller Et Tu.