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Esai Morales (born October 1, 1962) is an actor who was most recently cast to portray a priest in The Virgin of Juarez and as Lt. Tony Rodriguez on the long-running ABC television police drama NYPD Blue. He also appeared in the PBS drama American Family, which was rejected as a series by CBS and later picked up by KCET and PBS and the Showtime series Resurrection Blvd..
Morales took an interest in acting at the age of 12 when he saw Al Pacino in the movie Dog Day Afternoon. He began his pursuit of this career by attending the High School for the Performing Arts in Manhattan. His first professional performances were in theater and television in New York, and his first film—Bad Boys, about teenagers in prison—was released in 1983.
In another role he played a similarly unsympathetic character, the ex-convict/biker half-brother of 1950s rock and roll singer Ritchie Valens in the 1987 movie La Bamba. Some of his other roles have reflected his socio-political interests, such as The Burning Season in 1994, My Family/Mi Familia in 1995, The Disappearance Of Garcia Lorca in 1997, and Southern Cross in 1998. In the last three films, as well as in a few others such as Bloodhounds of Broadway in 1989 and Rapa Nui in 1994, Morales was given roles which highlighted (with increasing amounts of screen time) his acting as a man. He portrayed a police officer with the film Dogwatch in 1996. He has been cast as priest in The Virgin of Juarez.
Before The Virgin of Juarez and NYPD Blue, Morales appeared on television most notably in the mid-1980s, on Fame. In Where Eagles Dare he played a soldier in WWII. Morales has also appeared in Miami Vice, The Equalizer, and The Twilight Zone.
In the 1990s, he guest-starred on episodes of The Outer Limits, Tales from the Crypt, and two shorter-lived series, L.A. Doctors and The Hunger. He was a featured TV actor, seen in a two-part episode of Family Law (tv series) in 2000. His tenure on NYPD Blue as the head of the 15th precinct detective squad began in mid-season 2001 and continued until 2004 when he decided to cancel his contract (due mainly to the lack of screen time squad leaders received).
Appearing in three different television series at once did not mean the end of his film career, though others have commented that his career has taken a nosedive since the film La Bamba. Paid in Full was scheduled for release in October 2002. It marked a return to a criminal character such as those in his previous roles - in this case he played a drug dealer named Lulu. He also was cast in another Film American Fusion and On June 19, 2006, he would join the cast of Fox's series Vanished, as the FBI Boss of the Gale Harold and Ming-Na characters. The series was later canceled.
Born in New York and of Puerto Rican descent, his parents divorced. He describes himself as an "actorvist" primarily and as one of the founders of the Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, taking inspiration from his mother, who was an organizer for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.
In the Febrary 28, 2007 all-star benefit reading of "The Gift of Peace" at UCLA's Freud Playhouse, he portrays a hopeful member of a struggling immigrant family, and plays alongside actors Ed Asner, Barbara Bain, Amy Brenneman, George Coe, Wendie Malick, and James Pickens, Jr.. The play is an open appeal and fundraiser for passage of U.S. House Resolution 808, which seeks to establish a Cabinet-level "Department of Peace" in the U.S. government, to be funded by a two percent diversion of the Pentagon's annual budget.
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