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Courtney Vance

Vance with wife Angela Bassett

Courtney B. Vance (born March 12, 1960) is an American actor. He formerly starred as a regular in the NBC television series Law & Order: Criminal Intent as Ron Carver.

Vance was born in Detroit, Michigan. He attended Detroit Country Day School, a fee-paying university-preparatory school, and later graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor of arts degree. While attending Harvard, Vance was already working as an actor at the Boston Shakespeare Company. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree later at Yale School of Drama.

He has earned two Tony Award nominations, each in Tony Award-winning productions. He was first nominated for his role in August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fences and later for his lead role in John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation.

Vance's feature film roles have won him steady praise. His early credits include Hamburger Hill, The Hunt for Red October, and The Last Supper. More recently, he appeared in Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune, Penny Marshall's The Preacher's Wife, and in Clint Eastwood's Space Cowboys. Vance also starred in the independent film Love and Action in Chicago, a romantic comedy which he also co-produced. Vance played Black Panther Bobby Seale in the Melvin and Mario Van Peebles docudrama Panther.

Vance's television credits include such cable movies as:

• Blind Faith (opposite Charles S. Dutton), for which he received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Actor in 1999)
• the 1997 William Friedkin-directed 12 Angry Men (with Jack Lemmon, George C. Scott and Ossie Davis)
• the Hallmark presentation The Boys Next Door (alongside Nathan Lane, Tony Goldwyn, and Michael Jeter)
• The Tuskegee Airmen (with Laurence Fishburne and Andre Braugher)
• the television production of August Wilson's play The Piano Lesson
• The Affair, for which he received a 1996 CableACE Award nomination as Best Actor
• the Showtime presentation Whitewash: The Clarence Brandley Story

Courtney B. Vance is married to actress Angela Bassett. The couple's first children were twins, son Slater Josiah and daughter Bronwyn Golden, born on January 27, 2006. The twins were carried by a surrogate mother.

He and Bassett authored a book, Friends: A Love Story.

According to IMDB.com, Vance will appear in the December 6, 2007 Law & Order CI: episode as A.D.A. Ron Carver.^[1]

• Prior to joining the cast of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Vance appeared on the original Law & Order series twice: in a minor role in the first-season episode "By Hooker, By Crook", and in a major role in the fifth season episode "Rage".

• He is on the Board of Directors for The Actors Center in New York City.

Courtney Vance is a big supporter of Boys & Girls Clubs of America. He is an alumnus of the Detroit Boys & Girls Club, and was recently inducted into the Alumni Hall of Fame for all of Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

• Courtney B. Vance at the Internet Movie Database
• Courtney B. Vance Interview with wife Angela Bassett on Sidewalks Entertainment

References: [1]