Joe Spano
Joe Spano in October 2022.
Born	Joseph Peter Spano (1946-07-07)July 7, 1946 (age 79)
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1967–present
Spouse	Joan Zerrien ​ (m. 1980)​
Children	2

Joseph Peter Spano (born July 7, 1946)^[1][2] is an American actor known best for his roles as Lt. Henry Goldblume onHill Street Blues andFBISpecial AgentTobias C. Fornell onNCIS. He also voiced theChuck E. Cheese (at the time Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre) character, Pasqually the Chef, from 1977 to 1983.

Spano was a member of the improvisation group The Wing, and in college debuted as Paris in a production ofRomeo and Juliet in 1967. In 1968, he helped found theBerkeley Repertory Theatre, acting in its first production, and stayed with the company for ten years. He relocated toHollywood during the late 1970s, obtaining guest roles for television and minor roles inAmerican Graffiti (1973) andThe Enforcer (1976).

InHill Street Blues he played Henry Goldblume during the entire seven-year run of the series, first as a detective sergeant, later as a lieutenant. Goldblume was one of Hill Street precinct captain Frank Furillo's trusted junior officers, serving at times as a hostage negotiator and gangs relations officer. The character was sympathetic to crime victims, sometimes conflicting with his duties as a police officer. Spano was one of many actors appearing throughout each episode, which typically had several story lines intermingled.

AfterHill Street Blues ended, Spano won recurring roles in television police showsMurder One (1995) andNYPD Blue (1993), again as a detective, and has appeared regularly in television movies and television shows likeThe X-Files (episodes "Tempus Fugit" and "Max"),Mercy Point andAmazing Grace. Spano won anEmmy award in 1988 for Best Guest Actor in a Drama Series for a role he played in an episode ofMidnight Caller. He has appeared in several feature movies, includingApollo 13 andPrimal Fear. His credits are often confused with Australian actor Joseph Spano. They are not related.^[3]

He is a veteran stage actor on the east and west coasts. Spano made his Broadway debut in 1992 in the Roundabout Theater revival ofArthur Miller'sThe Price, withEli Wallach, which was nominated for a Tony for Best Revival. West coast stage credits include Eduardo Pavlovsky'sPotestad, andDavid Mamet'sSpeed-the-Plow andAmerican Buffalo, for which he was awarded an LA Drama Critics Circle Award. At the Rubicon Theater in Ventura he has played General Burgoyne inGeorge Bernard Shaw'sThe Devil's Disciple, Greg inA. R. Gurney'sSylvia and Vladimir inWaiting for Godot. He is a member of the Antaeus Theater Company and a founding member of three other theater companies.^[4] He played a seductive vampire in the cult musicalDracula: A Musical Nightmare in a small Los Angeles theatre.^[5] He also appeared in the TV movieBrotherhood of Justice withKeanu Reeves andKiefer Sutherland.

He is the voice of the Wild Flower Hotline for the Theodore Payne Foundation, which can be reached by telephoning (818) 768-1802.

Spano has been a recurring character ofNCIS since its premiere episode, "Yankee White", playing FBI Special AgentTobias Fornell, the FBI counterpart to NCIS Special AgentLeroy Jethro Gibbs, portrayed byMark Harmon. In Season 15, Fornell is no longer with the FBI, but is a private investigator.

Two episodes have used Fornell's personal life as the basis of anNCIS episode: one where Fornell's daughter is imperiled and another where Fornell's career is imperiled. In each episode, it is the friendship between Gibbs and Fornell which is invoked in order to involve NCIS in the resolution.

His parents were Vincent Dante Spano, a physician, and the former Virginia Jean Carpenter.^[6] He graduated fromArchbishop Riordan High School in 1963, and he is an honorary member of the House of Russi. Spano and his wife Joan Zerrien, a therapist, were married in 1980, and have two adopted daughters.

Ovation Awards

• 2009: Nominated for Lead Actor in a Play for the role of George in the Rubicon Theatre Company production ofWho's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?^[8]

• Joe Spano atIMDb

• 1946 births
• Living people
• Male actors from San Francisco
• American male film actors
• American male television actors
• 20th-century American male actors
• 21st-century American male actors
• American male stage actors
• American people of Italian descent
• Archbishop Riordan High School alumni

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