Michael Beach Biography (2)

Michael Beach's credits span the worlds of film, television and theater. A graduate of the Julliard School, Beach has worked with acclaimed directors such as Tony Scott, James Cameron, Robert Altman and Mike Figgis. He currently stars in Third Watch as idealistic paramedic Monte Doc Parker.

In 1997, Beach was in the hit film Soul Food about a family dealing with death and survival (starring Vanessa Williams and Vivica A. Fox). Directed by George Tillman and produced by Kenneth Babyface Edmonds, the film received rave reviews from critics. In what many consider to be his breakout film role, Beach starred in Waiting to Exhale opposite Angela Bassett and Whitney Houston. He also starred in A Family Thing with Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones. Other film credits include White Man's Burden, True Romance, One False Move, Internal Affairs, Lean on Me and The Abyss.

On television, Beach had a recurring role on NBC's Emmy Award-winning drama ER, portraying Jeanie Boulet's (Gloria Reuben) husband who had contracted the HIV virus and passed it on to her. Beach also starred opposite Don Cheadle in the cable movie Rebound, directed by his best friend, Eriq La Salle (ER). Beach has played the nephew to Cicely Tyson's Scrooge in Ms. Scrooge, a cable network's update of Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol, and starred opposite Lela Rochon in the Disney telefilm The Ruby Bridges Story, a true depiction of desegregation in public schools. He will appear in the film Asunder with Blair Underwood.

Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, Beach has been acting since high school when a friend talked him into auditioning for a school play. He has performed off-Broadway, in regional theater and in Los Angeles theater in such productions as Much Ado About Nothing

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