Movies

Benjamin Bratt (born December 16, 1963) is an American actor and producer who has worked in film and on television. He is most known for playing Paco Aguilar in Blood In, Blood Out. He has also had supporting film roles in the 1990s in Demolition Man (1993), Clear and Present Danger (1994), and The River Wild (1994). From 1995 to 1999, he starred as New York City Police Department (NYPD) Detective Rey Curtis on the NBC drama series Law & Order.

In the 2000s, Bratt appeared in Miss Congeniality (2000), Traffic (2000), Piñero (2001), Catwoman (2004), and Trucker (2008), Despicable Me 2 (2013), Snitch (2013), Coco (2017), among other films. On television, Bratt has portrayed Dr. Jake Reilly on ABC's Private Practice (2011–2013), Steve Navarro on 24: Live Another Day (2014), and Jahil Rivera on Star (2016–2018). He has also done voice acting in animated feature films.

Bratt produced the film Dolores (2017), which explores the life of Dolores Huerta, an American labor leader and civil rights activist. The film received critical acclaim and several awards.

Bratt has received a Screen Actors Guild Award and been nominated for two others. He has received four ALMA Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and a Blockbuster Entertainment Award. He is an activist in the American Indian Movement.

Early life
Bratt was born on December 16, 1963, in San Francisco, California, the third of five children of Eldy (née Banda), a nurse and political activist, and Peter Bratt Sr., a sheet metal worker. His mother was born in Lima, Peru, and is of Quechua descent. She moved to the United States with her family at age 14. His father is an American of German and English ancestry. Bratt's paternal grandfather, George, was a Broadway actor.

An activist for Native American rights, his mother took Bratt (age 6) and her other children to participate in the 1969 Native American occupation of Alcatraz. Led by young people from San Francisco, it raised national awareness of issues facing Native Americans, and attracted participants from across the country. Bratt attended Lowell High School in San Francisco, where he was a member of the Lowell Forensic Society. Bratt earned a B.F.A. at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1986, where he joined the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. Enrolled in the M.F.A. program at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, he left before receiving his degree in order to star in the 1987 television film Juarez.