Reg E. Cathey

Reginald Eurias Cathey was born on August 18, 1958, in Huntsville, Alabama, to a father who served as an Army colonel in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, and a mother who worked as both a Department of Defense employee and an educator. He had one sister, Donza. The family relocated to a rural farm in West Germany, where Cathey spent much of his childhood before returning to Alabama at age 14. His interest in theater took root at age nine, when he attended a United Service Organization show while living in West Germany. He went on to graduate from J.O. Johnson High School, where he performed in productions including To Kill a Mockingbird, and later pursued formal training at the University of Michigan and the Yale School of Drama.

Cathey's early professional visibility came through Square One Television, a sketch comedy-oriented mathematics series produced by Children's Television Workshop and broadcast on PBS from 1987 to 1992. He later described himself and his castmates as the "Not Ready for Prime-Time Mathematicians." Guest appearances on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Homicide: Life on the Street followed, along with film roles that included Freeze in The Mask (1994), the coroner in Se7en (1995), Deetee in Tank Girl, the villain Dirty Dee in Pootie Tang, and the homeless man Al in American Psycho. He also worked with Wire creator David Simon on the Emmy Award-winning miniseries The Corner, playing a drug addict known as Scalio.

On Broadway, Cathey appeared in The Green Bird in 2000. His stage work extended beyond Broadway as well, including a 2009 theatrical production of The Shawshank Redemption at Wyndham's Theatre in London, where he played Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding.

Cathey held recurring television roles on two prominent HBO series: he played unit manager Martin Querns on the prison drama Oz and Norman Wilson during the fourth and fifth seasons of The Wire. Beginning in 2013, he took on the role of Freddy Hayes, owner of Freddy's BBQ, in Netflix's House of Cards. His portrayal of Hayes across the second, third, and fourth seasons earned him three consecutive Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series, including a win in 2015. Additional television credits included recurring appearances on Grimm as Baron Samedi, the role of boxing promoter Barry K. Word on the FX series Lights Out, the county sheriff in the Cinemax series Outcast, and James Lucas in Marvel's Luke Cage. He made multiple guest appearances on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and a guest appearance on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

In film, Cathey co-starred in Josh Trank's Fantastic Four (2015) as Dr. Franklin Storm, father of The Invisible Woman and The Human Torch. He also participated in The People Speak (2009), a documentary feature drawing on dramatic and musical performances of letters, diaries, and speeches sourced from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. He narrated Aftermath: Population Zero for the National Geographic Channel and TLC's Wonders of Weather. On the children's series Between the Lions, he played King Ray in an episode centered on the story of Rumpelstiltskin.

Cathey died at his home in New York City on February 9, 2018, at the age of 59, following a reported illness of lung cancer. He was cremated, and his ashes were spread in New York City.