LOS ANGELES — Chicago native Andre Braugher, the Emmy-winning actor best known for his roles on the series “Homicide: Life on The Street” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” died Monday at age 61.
Braugher’s publicist Jennifer Allen confirmed his death to the trade publication Variety.
The actor had his breakthrough role in 1989’s “Glory,” starring alongside Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington in the film about an all-Black army regiment during the the Civil War.
He told The Associated Press in 2019 that he struggled to find work afterward in a Hollywood where roles for African American actors were “few and far between. Period.”
But he would establish himself with the role of Det. Frank Pembleton, which he would play for seven seasons in “Homicide: Life on the Street,” a gritty police drama on NBC.
Years later he would play a very different kind of cop on a very different kind of show, shifting to comedy as Capt. Ray Holt on the Andy Samberg-starring series “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” It would run for eight seasons from 2013 to 2021 on Fox and NBC.
Though he’d dipped his toe into comedy in the TNT dramedy “Men of a Certain Age,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” still represented a major shift for Braugher, who was known for acting in dark and heavy dramas.
“I just felt as though it was an opportunity to do something strikingly different from the rest of my career,” Braugher told the AP. “I like it because it just simply opens up my mind and forces me to think in a different way. So I think I’ve become much more sort of supple as an actor, and more open to the incredible number of possibilities of how to play a scene.”
Braugher was an 11-time Emmy nominee, winning in 1998 for his “Homicide” work and in 2006 as lead actor on the FX series “Thief.”
Braugher grew up on the West Side near Pulaski and Roosevelt roads and attended the prestigious St. Ignatius College Prep.
“I didn’t know it was a rough neighborhood,” he told the Sun-Times in 1998. “I didn’t know we were poor until I went to high school. Then I was like, ‘Oh, they’re rich and we’re poor.’ ”
He earned a four-year engineering scholarship to Stanford University, where he had a change of heart during sophomore year.
“I was in the library doing my calculus equations, and I had no social life. I had never been on a date. I had never danced with a woman in my life,” Braugher said.
“So I said to myself, ‘What can I do?’ Of course, as opposed to the library, the theater is populated with charming young women,” said Braugher, who decided then to take up acting.
Braugher most recently starred in “She Said,” the 2022 film about the New York Times journalists who broke the story of Harvey Weinstein’s years of sexually abusing women. Braugher played Times editor Dean Baquet.
His other film credits included “Primal Fear” and “Get on the Bus,” and his other TV credits included “Hack,” “Gideon’s Crossing” and “The Good Fight.”
He was married for more than 30 years to his “Homicide” co-star Ami Brabson. They had three sons.
