Wanda De Jesus

Wanda De Jesus is an American character actress born on August 26, 1958, in the Little Italy neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. Her parents had relocated to New York from Puerto Rico. De Jesus attended the High School of Performing Arts and went on to earn a degree in performing arts from the City College of New York in 1981.

De Jesus launched both her stage and television careers simultaneously in 1986. That year she made her Broadway debut in Cuba and His Teddy Bear, appearing opposite Robert De Niro. Concurrently, she took on a recurring role in the NBC daytime soap opera Another World. Her relationship with actor Jimmy Smits also began in 1986; the two have lived together in Los Angeles.

In 1987, De Jesus joined the cast of the ABC prison drama series Mariah, which ran briefly. She subsequently made guest appearances on L.A. Law, Tales from the Darkside, and Matlock. Her film work began in earnest in 1990, when she appeared in supporting roles in both the action comedy Downtown and the science fiction film RoboCop 2. From 1991 to 1992, she portrayed Santana Andrade on the NBC soap opera Santa Barbara, becoming the fourth actress to take on that role.

De Jesus returned to film in 1994 with the crime drama The Glass Shield, and that same year appeared alongside Jimmy Smits in a stage production of Death and the Maiden at the Mark Taper Forum. In 1995 she joined the regular cast of the short-lived drama series Live Shot. Television guest appearances during this period included Babylon 5, Touched by an Angel, NYPD Blue, and Nash Bridges. Her film credits from the late 1990s and early 2000s include The Insider (1999), Flawless (1999), Once in the Life (2000), and Ghosts of Mars (2001).

In 2002, De Jesus starred opposite Clint Eastwood in the mystery thriller Blood Work, playing Graciella Rivers, a Latino woman whose anger stems from her sister's murder. That same year she began a recurring role on the CBS crime series CSI: Miami, portraying MDPD Detective Adelle Sevilla through 2003. She starred in the crime drama film Illegal Tender in 2007. In 2010, De Jesus played Iris Blanco, the mayor of Pine Valley, in a recurring capacity on the ABC soap opera All My Children. Also in 2010, she was cast as the head of a police squad on the NBC series Law & Order: Los Angeles; however, after two episodes had been filmed, the role was recast with a different actress following significant changes to the character. De Jesus had a recurring role in the FX crime drama Sons of Anarchy in 2012, and in 2022 she appeared in a recurring capacity in the Paramount+ psychological thriller Fatal Attraction.