(1 July 1962 - 11 December 2023)
The American actor Andre Braugher, who has died from lung cancer at the age of 61, will be most remembered for his work on television in Homicide: Life on the Street and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Although his death was far too premature, he enjoyed a thirty-odd year career on TV, in cinema and on stage. Andre Keith Braugher was born in Chicago, the son of a heavy equipment operator and a postal worker. He went to St Ignatius College and gained a scholarship to Stanford University. Although he was officially studying engineering, the acting bug bit him and he graduated in theatre studies in 1984.
Four years later he graduated from Juilliard and started acting in New York’s Shakespeare in the Park, playing Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. He did several seasons there, appearing in King John, Twelfth Night and Measure for Measure, played the title role in Henry V, was Claudius in Hamlet and Duke Frederick in As You Like It. From 1989 he broke into both television and film. He played the young detective Winston Blake in five Kojak TV movies and landed the title role in Larry Peerce’s The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson, about discrimination in the US Army, then there were 98 episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street as Detective Pembleton, set in Baltimore’s Police Homicide Unit, for which Braugher won Primetime Emmys in 1995 and 1998.
His first film was Edward Zwick’s Oscar-winning Glory, set in the American Civil War. He played a DA in the thriller Striking Distance, was an actor in Spike Lee’s Get On the Bus, about African-Americans travelling from Los Angeles to Washington DC for the Million Man March. City of Angels was a remake of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire. Poseidon was Wolfgang Petersen’s take on The Poseidon Adventure with Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas and Richard Dreyfuss – Braugher played the captain. He was General Hager in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and an attorney in Frank Darabont’s sci-fi horror film The Mist in 2007. Braugher seemed at home in any genre and was back with the superheroes in the animated Superman/Batman: Apocalypse. He was then Secretary of Defence in Philip Noyce’s Salt with Angelina Jolie. His last film, in 2022, was Maria Schrader’s #MeToo drama She Said, with Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan, playing Dean Baquet, editor-in-chief of The New York Times.
On television he did 38 episodes of Hack, a series with Braugher playing the partner of David Morse’s disgraced police officer. Then he did 22 episodes of the comedy-drama Men of a Certain Age, four shows as a doctor in House with Hugh Laurie, and thirteen of the military drama Last Resort. Then came Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the police comedy that ran from 2013 to 2021. Braugher was Captain Holt, the only serious one in a cage of freaks, who is gay (although little was made of it, apart from its token inclusion in an all-straight cast).
In real life Andre Braugher married the actress Ami Brabson by whom he had three sons. Braugher had been a smoker but gave up in 2010. His colleagues were shocked by the death of this much-liked, gentle soul who was a very talented actor.
MICHAEL DARVELL
