Blair Underwood was born on August 25, 1964, in Tacoma, Washington, and grew up on Army posts in the United States and Germany as the son of a colonel. He studied drama at Carnegie Mellon University and made his screen debut in the 1985 hip-hop film Krush Groove. In 1987, at 23, he was cast as attorney Jonathan Rollins on NBC’s L.A. Law, a leading role on a major network legal drama that he held until the series ended in 1994. His work on the show brought the first of his two Golden Globe nominations.
His film work followed alongside the television career. He appeared in Just Cause, played opposite Jada Pinkett Smith in Set It Off, and took roles in Gattaca and Deep Impact. He co-starred with Cicely Tyson in the 1998 miniseries Mama Flora’s Family, an adaptation of Alex Haley’s writing. On television he later led the CBS medical drama City of Angels, joined HBO’s In Treatment in 2008, earning his second Golden Globe nomination, and appeared in Quantico and Self Made.
In Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us, he portrayed attorney Robert Burns. Discussing the performance on Pod Save the People, Underwood described using research assembled by DuVernay’s team and conversations with Yusef Salaam. He wanted to portray the attorney with care rather than reduce him to an ineffective caricature.
Stage work has run through the same career. He played Stanley in the 2012 Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire, appeared with David Alan Grier in the Broadway revival of A Soldier’s Play directed by Kenny Leon, and has also worked behind the camera as a director, including the film The Bridge to Nowhere. His honors include five NAACP Image Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award and nominations for a Tony Award and a Grammy Award. In 2024, he appeared in the horror film Longlegs.
