Michael De Lorenzo

Michael De Lorenzo is an American actor, director, writer, producer, dancer, and musician born in 1959 or 1960. Raised in the Bronx, New York, he is the second eldest of four children. His father, Arthur De Lorenzo, was of Italian descent, and his mother, Carmen De Lorenzo, was Puerto Rican. He has one sister and two brothers.

De Lorenzo began his performing career as a dancer at a young age with Ballet Hispanico under Tina Ramirez. He subsequently earned scholarships from the School of American Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet, and the New York School of Ballet, and performed alongside Rudolf Nureyev and the National Ballet of Canada as well as Mikhail Baryshnikov and the American Ballet Theatre. He also danced with Richard Thomas's U.S. Terpsichore Ballet Company. De Lorenzo attended the Manhattan-based High School of Performing Arts, the institution made famous by the film and television series Fame. A serious dance injury ultimately ended his pursuit of a professional ballet career.

His stage work brought him to Broadway, where one of his earliest acting roles came in the revival of West Side Story, in which he appeared as a member of the Sharks street gang. He returned to Broadway in 1985 with the musical Streetheat. His stage credits also include productions outside of Broadway, among them Stand Up Tragedy at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 1989, for which he won a Drama-Logue Award for Best Actor, portraying five different roles in the play. Additional stage work includes Fool for Love at the Madrid Theatre, Tumbleweed at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, and the New York City productions Paperbird and Aria Dacapa.

De Lorenzo appeared in the 1980 film Fame and subsequently joined the television series Fame as a series regular from 1982 to 1987. His television work expanded to include appearances on Miami Vice and A Different World. In 1989, following his Drama-Logue Award-winning stage performance, he was cast as Alex Torres in the ABC sitcom Head of the Class alongside Howard Hesseman, appearing in the series' final two seasons through 1991. In 1994, he took on the role of Detective Eddie Torres in Dick Wolf's urban police drama New York Undercover, a series notable for being the first American prime-time drama to feature two people of color, De Lorenzo and Malik Yoba, in starring roles. For that performance, he received the NCLR ALMA Award for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series in both 1996 and 1998. He later starred in the Showtime drama Resurrection Blvd. as boxing champion Carlos Santiago, earning both the Imagen Award for Best Actor and the Vision Award for Best Performance in Drama. His television work continued with appearances on CSI: NY, Numb3rs, Ghost Whisperer, and CSI: Miami. In 2016, he appeared in the CBS drama Blue Bloods as Fausto, a paraplegic witness, in the seventh season episode Mob Rules. In 2017, he played LGBT political activist José Sarria in When We Rise, written by Academy Award winner Dustin Lance Black and directed by Gus Van Sant.

His film credits include Rob Reiner's A Few Good Men (1992) as Pfc. William T. Santiago, Alive (1993) as Rafael Cano, Fast Forward (1985) directed by Sidney Poitier, My Family (1995) as Butch Mejia, and The Wall (1998) as Luis. On May 25, 2013, he won the Best Supporting Actor award at the Los Angeles Movie Awards for his role as Keith Caverns in The Employer.

De Lorenzo also appeared in music videos during his career, including Michael Jackson's Beat It and three videos for Lionel Richie: Running with the Night, Ballerina Girl, and Dancing on the Ceiling. He appeared in Alexander O'Neal's Fake and danced in Chaka Khan's performance of I Feel for You at the 1985 Grammy Awards.

As a musician, De Lorenzo is a vocalist, songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, drums, and piano. Under the name Valentino, he partnered with the R&B group Teen Dream and released the single Get Busy in 1987. During his time on New York Undercover in the mid-to-late 1990s, several of his songs appeared on the series, including Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight. His music also featured on Resurrection Blvd., and he co-wrote Angel for The Sims 2. His album Rescue Me was released in 2009. De Lorenzo is additionally a member of the Directors Guild of America and has directed episodes of Resurrection Blvd. as well as independent films and music videos.