Joe Spano
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Boyish-looking actor Joe Spano, best known for his sympathetic detective role on the grim 1980's police series Capitaine Furillo (1981), was born Joseph Peter Spano on July 7, 1946, in San Francisco, the son of a doctor. A Bishop Riordan High School and University of California-Berkeley graduate, his original intention was to be a premed major, but that dissipated with the growing interest of acting.
Joe gained experience working with a San Francisco improvisation group called The Wing. While at college he made his debut as Paris in a production of "Romeo and Juliet" in 1967 and the very next year helped founded the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, appearing in its very first first production of "Woyzek." He stayed with the company for 10 years and appeared in many of its plays including "Hamlet" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."
In the 1970's, Joe decided to give Hollywood a try. Playing a seductive vampire in the cult musical "Dracula: A Musical Nightmare" in a small LA theatre, he pursued film and TV at the same time. In between small parts on TV ("Streets of San Francisco," "Lou Grant," "Trapper John"), he earned bit roles as hoodlums and other assorted urban troublemaker types in such films as American Graffiti (1973) and L'inspecteur ne renonce jamais (1976). He was also given the romantic cub reporter lead in the obscure supernatural horror movie Warlock Moon (1973) and, later, co-starred in the equally obscure low-budget political drama Northern Lights (1978).
After his Emmy-nominated success playing junior officer Henry Goldblume on Capitaine Furillo (1981), Joe appeared here, there and everywhere but to somewhat less notoriety. He managed to cop recurring roles in several other series: Amazing Grace (1995), again as a detective, Murder One (1995), and as a doctor in Mercy Point (1998). He also appeared in assorted TV movies and mini-series including Désastre à la centrale 7 (1988), Confiance aveugle (1990), Entre père et mère (1991), the starring role in La rivière infernale (1993), and De la Terre à la Lune (1998), not to mention guest parts on "Valerie," "Civil Wars," "Reasonable Doubts," "The X Files," "Profiler," "JAG," Nash Bridges" and "Touched by an Angel."
Joe made his Broadway bow in 1992 as Walter in a revival of Arthur Miller's "The Price" starring Eli Wallach. West coast stage credits have included "Speed-the-Plow" and "American Buffalo," the latter earning him a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award. In films, Spano worked alongside Tom Hanks in Apollo 13 (1995) and Richard Gere and Edward Norton in Peur primale (1996), among others.
Into the millennium, Joe returned to another recurring detective role with the hit police series New York Police Blues (1993). More recently, Spano had the frequent role of FBI Special Agent Tobias Fornell in NCIS : Enquêtes spéciales (2003) in between featured roles in such movies as Explosion imminente (2001), in which he played a character named Captain Spano, Mission évasion (2002), Hollywoodland (2006), La Faille (2007) and Frost/Nixon, l'heure de vérité (2008)
Spano and his wife Joan, a therapist, have adopted two daughters. His credits are often confused with Australian actor Joseph Spano. They are not related.
Joe gained experience working with a San Francisco improvisation group called The Wing. While at college he made his debut as Paris in a production of "Romeo and Juliet" in 1967 and the very next year helped founded the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, appearing in its very first first production of "Woyzek." He stayed with the company for 10 years and appeared in many of its plays including "Hamlet" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."
In the 1970's, Joe decided to give Hollywood a try. Playing a seductive vampire in the cult musical "Dracula: A Musical Nightmare" in a small LA theatre, he pursued film and TV at the same time. In between small parts on TV ("Streets of San Francisco," "Lou Grant," "Trapper John"), he earned bit roles as hoodlums and other assorted urban troublemaker types in such films as American Graffiti (1973) and L'inspecteur ne renonce jamais (1976). He was also given the romantic cub reporter lead in the obscure supernatural horror movie Warlock Moon (1973) and, later, co-starred in the equally obscure low-budget political drama Northern Lights (1978).
After his Emmy-nominated success playing junior officer Henry Goldblume on Capitaine Furillo (1981), Joe appeared here, there and everywhere but to somewhat less notoriety. He managed to cop recurring roles in several other series: Amazing Grace (1995), again as a detective, Murder One (1995), and as a doctor in Mercy Point (1998). He also appeared in assorted TV movies and mini-series including Désastre à la centrale 7 (1988), Confiance aveugle (1990), Entre père et mère (1991), the starring role in La rivière infernale (1993), and De la Terre à la Lune (1998), not to mention guest parts on "Valerie," "Civil Wars," "Reasonable Doubts," "The X Files," "Profiler," "JAG," Nash Bridges" and "Touched by an Angel."
Joe made his Broadway bow in 1992 as Walter in a revival of Arthur Miller's "The Price" starring Eli Wallach. West coast stage credits have included "Speed-the-Plow" and "American Buffalo," the latter earning him a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award. In films, Spano worked alongside Tom Hanks in Apollo 13 (1995) and Richard Gere and Edward Norton in Peur primale (1996), among others.
Into the millennium, Joe returned to another recurring detective role with the hit police series New York Police Blues (1993). More recently, Spano had the frequent role of FBI Special Agent Tobias Fornell in NCIS : Enquêtes spéciales (2003) in between featured roles in such movies as Explosion imminente (2001), in which he played a character named Captain Spano, Mission évasion (2002), Hollywoodland (2006), La Faille (2007) and Frost/Nixon, l'heure de vérité (2008)
Spano and his wife Joan, a therapist, have adopted two daughters. His credits are often confused with Australian actor Joseph Spano. They are not related.
