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Jimmy
Smits
as Matt Santos
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Emmy Award and Golden Globe-winning actor Jimmy Smits has established himself as one of the most versatile actors working in film, television and on the stage. He is one of the few actors who can move effortlessly from television to film to stage and back again.
After an influential and successful role in the critically acclaimed series “NYPD Blue,” Smits returned to television once again in a powerful role on NBC’s “The West Wing,” playing a Houston congressman who aspires to the White House.
Smits has enjoyed an exemplary television career and has the distinction of having received an Emmy nomination for every year he has been on television. He received six consecutive Emmy nominations for his role as Victor Sifuentes on “L.A. Law” (winning the Emmy in 1990) and also five Emmy nominations for his role as Bobby Simone on the Emmy-winning drama “NYPD Blue.” Additionally, he has three Golden Globe nominations -- one of which he won -- and four SAG Award nominations. His highly touted departure from “NYPD Blue” also won the Humanitas Award.
In theater, Smits was most recently seen on stage in New York Public Theatre’s presentation of “Much Ado About Nothing” for the 2004 summer season of Shakespeare-in-the-Park. A few months earlier, he starred on Broadway in Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Anna in the Tropics.” Prior to his recent stagework, Smits played Senator Bail Organa in “Star Wars: Episode II-Attack of the Clones.” He will also reprise the role in “Star Wars: Episode III- Revenge of the Sith,” due in theaters later this year.
Smits will also be seen in February 2005 in George Wolfe’s “Lackawanna Blues” for HBO Films. The story, told from the perspective of Junior, a young boy growing up in 1956, revolves around a rooming house run by Rachel “Nanny” Crosby, who shapes the lives of her boarders as she cares for them. Smits also starred in New Line Cinema’s “Price of Glory,” directed by Carlos Avila.
Smits has involved himself in various charitable organizations over the years and has been a strong advocate for education. In 1997, he co-founded the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, along with Esai Morales, Sonia Braga and Washington attorney Felix Sanchez, to promote Hispanic talent in the performing arts. The program offers graduate scholarships and cash grants at prominent colleges and universities in order to expand career opportunities and increase access for Hispanic artists and professionals while fostering the emergence of new Hispanic talent.
Other organizations involving Smits include the New York Public Theatre (for which he also serves on the board of directors), the Fulfillment Fund, United Way, the Police Athletic League, Project Angel Food, and the L.A. Free Clinic, among others.
A native of Brooklyn and a second-generation American, Smits traces his Hispanic roots to Puerto Rico on his mother's side and to Suriname, South America, for his father's. His family moved several times during his childhood and he spent his early adolescence in Puerto Rico, where he learned to speak Spanish.
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