Jeff Coopwood - Official Site

Biography

(Reprinted with permission of Laura Perdew)

From the time he was eight, Jeff Coopwood knew he wanted to be an actor. He not only reached that goal, but in the nearly five decades since, the California State University, Dominguez Hills alumnus (M.A., Class of '08, Humanities; HUX) has played scores of film, television, stage and commercial characters; including roles on "Seinfeld," "The Client," "The Pretender," "The Bold and the Beautiful," "Family Matters," "City of Angels," "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" and "Beverly Hills, 90210" to name just a few.

He has worked with legends from Eartha Kitt to Oprah Winfrey and performed voice replacement work for such diverse talent as Morgan Freeman, Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, John Candy, Tyler Perry, Eddie Murphy, Samuel L. Jackson, Laurence Fishburne and James Earl Jones, among many others.

Also a television broadcaster, he was an on-air host for former Los Angeles PBS affiliate KCET for five years. In his native Chicago, he was the Emmy nominated television game show host of the Illinois State Lottery's TV game show and the host of the syndicated TV game show "Know Your Heritage."

In addition to his prolific front-of-the-camera work, he also has a large body of voiceover work for film, television, commercials, and video games including "Alex Cross," "The Green Mile," "The Rock," "The Fugitive," "A Time to Kill," "Cool Runnings," "Spider-Man 2," "Beethoven's 4th," "Love & Basketball," "The Preacher's Wife," "Boomerang," "The Rugrats Movie," "What's Love Got To Do With It?," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "The Wild Thornberry's" film and series.

He is one of the few artists to have worked on both the "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" franchises, providing the voice of "Captain Panaka" in several "Star Wars" videogames and the ominous voice of the "Borg" in the film "Star Trek: First Contact," delivering the now iconic movie line, "Resistance is Futile."

Beyond acting and broadcasting, he has also been an opera singer and a writer, his work having appeared in the Chicago Post, Backstage West, the Chicago Sun-Times and others.

Those who held influential roles in his life, set the stage for such an eclectic and fruitful career. Coopwood credits several of his former teachers with keeping him on course.

"From elementary school, all through college... whenever I reached a crossroad, there always seemed to be a phenomenal, extraordinary educator who was right there at that fork in the road, insuring that I made the right choice," he recalled. As early as third grade, he experienced the first of several life-altering academic interventions, when his teacher, a nun at the Catholic school he attended in Miami, noticed his boredom and impatience in class and rather than disciplining him, challenged him to do fourth grade level work. Newly motivated, instead of plodding through third grade, he excelled and advanced to fifth grade.

More than forty years later, at CSU Dominguez Hills, the late emeritus professor of English, Dr. Hal Marienthal, was highly influential during Coopwood's studies of theatre, film and music and served as Coopwood's graduate thesis advisor. Marienthal was also enormously supportive when Coopwood took an academic leave following the sudden loss of his mother in an automobile accident.

"He wasn't just an educator he was a coach, cheerleader, trusted advisor, friend, mentor, champion, and support system. My take away from the HUX program and my fondest memory of this university was, without a doubt, Dr. Marienthal," Coopwood remarked.

A second-generation broadcaster, as both parents were radio broadcasters, he grew up around people like Diahann Carroll, Flip Wilson, Redd Foxx, Muhammad Ali, Larry King and others. His childhood is peppered with such memories as watching backstage as Ike and Tina Turner performed "Proud Mary," Ray Charles feeling his face to "see what I looked like," greeting Mahalia Jackson, Leontyne Price calling him "beautiful face," B.B. King recalling he grew up with Coopwood's step-grandfather, sharing breakfast with Gladys Knight and Muhammad Ali wanting him to become the face of Ali's burger chain called "Champburger."

"My mother hosted a radio talk show in Miami and the stars, who either performed or vacationed in Miami, would come on her show," he recalled. "It was an experience that made me learn very quickly how to be a young adult."

In addition to her own broadcasting career, Coopwood's mother, Louise Riley, was a former actress who had understudied Eartha Kitt on Broadway, was one of the first African American graduates of New York's Feagin School of Dramatic Art, as well as the famed John Robert Powers Modeling School and Agency. She later trained young ladies to be models at the charm school she herself founded in Miami. Cleverly, she helped these women enter modeling by providing them with opportunities to appear in a fashion magazine that she launched. Later, she also published community newspapers in Miami and Chicago.

His parents amicably divorced in his youth. His father, Jesse Coopwood, was a jazz radio broadcasting "legend" at several radio stations in Gary, Indiana, who burnished his own reputation by interviewing not only prominent jazz recording artists of the day, but also civil rights icons such as the now deceased Rev. Ralph Abernathy, a colleague and associate of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Using his radio platform, Jesse Coopwood is credited with ensuring that Gary did not suffer riots of the civil rights movement as so many other cities did. Some of Jesse Coopwood's materials are currently housed in a Civil Rights History collection in the Library of Congress.

The elder Coopwood also shared a childhood friendship that endured for 30 years with Joe Jackson, patriarch of the famous Jackson musical family and their most famous offspring, Michael and Janet Jackson. Also, Jesse Coopwood hosted the first talent contest that the young group, "The Jackson Five," ever competed in. They won. Years later, following the sudden death of Michael Jackson in 2009, the Jackson family included a newspaper clipping about that first talent show appearance in the pictorial program that was distributed for Michael Jackson's memorial service. In the photo, Jesse Coopwood is seen presenting the family with their first place award. A young Michael is also seen, standing next to (and barely just twice as tall as) the winner's trophy.

While Michael Jackson was just beginning his appearances on musical stages in Gary, a seven-year-old Coopwood (three months to the day older than Michael) was in Chicago just discovering his own calling to the theatrical stage.

Although Coopwood's mother was working on-air in Chicago radio, it was to be during time spent with his grandmother, Lee Flora Adams, in their Chicago home watching "the stories," or soap operas, that laid the groundwork for his future. Beyond that, it was when his mother and he transplanted to Texas for a brief one-year stay while she was on-air talent for radio station KJET in Beaumont, that the eight-year-old Coopwood noticed a child actor appearing on a soap opera in Texas was on the same show he had watched with his grandmother on her television back in Illinois.

"This was the first time I realized that certain broadcasting, television, for example, is national. It's not just in your own local area," he remembered. "This kid was laughing, joking and having a ball on this TV show. And he was about my age. And being seen everywhere and I understood he was getting paid to do it. Why wouldn't I want to do that for a living?"

So after a "two-year campaign" to persuade his mother to agree to let him take acting classes, the young Coopwood, by then 10 years old, was living in Miami, where his mother had taken a more prestigious on-air radio job. She finally relented and Coopwood began attending a Saturday acting institute for elementary school children held at Barry College, (now Barry University).

That beginning served him well. In high school, he would become a three-time state speech and debate champion and two-time national finalist. During his senior year at Miami Senior High School and mentored by another educator, his drama teacher, Marty Hancock; Coopwood was named Best Actor in the district and state one-act play competitions and second in the state monologue competition by the International Thespian Society. One day, the local opera company, the Greater Miami Opera Association, where Luciano Pavarotti made his American debut and now known as the Florida Grand Opera; made a visit to his high school and performed a one-act operetta. Although he hadn't been exposed to an extensive range of opera, his mother did own a single album set of Giuseppe Verdi's "La Traviata," which, as a boy, Coopwood played "until the groves wore out."

After enjoying the operatic company, Coopwood went backstage and met the pianist and jokingly asked if he could show off his own operatic chops. With no formal vocal training, at that point, he sang his rendition of the baritone aria "Di Provenza il mar" from "La Traviata" for the pianist. To his surprise, that pianist turned out to be the opera company's associate conductor and chorus master and Coopwood's stunt resulted in a formal audition and subsequently an offer to sing with the opera company, which he did for four seasons.

"I went to college already knowing that I had a job singing with one of the top ten opera companies in the country," Coopwood said, adding that once he arrived at the University of Miami (UM), where he received a full academic scholarship, he took formal voice lessons.

"Again, education changes lives," he said.

However, his college education still wasn't a clear run-through. Although in high school he had been a National Merit Scholar, National Achievement Scholar and was named the first Presidential Scholar at UM, he was already working professionally in his chosen career.

So at the time, he thought toiling away at school seemed unnecessary. After a year and half, he left college to pursue his career and "find" himself.

"But I soon realized that finding yourself' at 18 years old, without an education, meant that you were kind of lost. Nobody wants an 18-year-old kid with no education; certainly not in terms of employing you."

But shortly thereafter, he persuaded the principal at an all-boy's Catholic high school near the university to hire him to establish and coach a speech and debate team. He was hired, despite his youth and lack of a credential or degree, only because he had been a former champion public speaker and debater. He would go in after school and coach the team.

"Those kids won virtually everything that year. It was at that moment, being on the other side of the lectern, so to speak -in the classroom - that I rediscovered my passion for education," Coopwood recalled. "I had to teach to appreciate what it was like to be a student."

Returning to school after that teaching experience, Coopwood was renewed and newly determined, despite his year and a half away, to graduate on time and with the class he matriculated with. Although his mother had always supported his interest in acting, she had also urged him to have an academic back-up plan to accompany his major in drama.

Therefore, in what was effectively his senior year, he combined a heavy unit course load with extensive use of the College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) and managed to complete 72 semester credits in that single academic year, majoring in drama, but with five minors: broadcasting, journalism, applied music (voice), speech and English.

"To me, college was an academic buffet," he said.

He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with honors from UM and was inducted into Alpha Psi Omega, the national theater arts fraternity.

Coopwood began his full-time professional career immediately. Just five days after graduating, he was under contract understudying the male lead in the Broadway national touring production of the musical "Timbuktu!," an all-black version of "Kismet," starring the legendary Eartha Kitt and directed by Geoffrey Holder, who had won two Tony Awards as best director and costume designer of the original Broadway musical production of "The Wiz."

From there, Coopwood appeared in two consecutive productions at the famed Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre in Jupiter, Florida. For the next several years, in addition to his acting career, he also continued to teach, coach and lecture in speech and debate at high schools and universities across the country; including Harvard, Northwestern, Georgetown, Marquette and Emory universities, the University of Pennsylvania, as well as his alma mater, UM.

For the past twenty years, he has lived in Los Angeles, enjoying the rarified air of the working actor in film, television, theatre, commercials and even videogames. For the last two years he has continued to feed his passion for education by being a guest artist for students in the Master of Fine Arts screenwriting program at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, in a class taught by fellow UM alumnus and veteran TV sitcom writer and producer, David Isaacs.

Although he has enjoyed a long, varied and prolific career, there are still many roles that Coopwood hopes to play. On the big and small screen, but also in front of the classroom. He said he's able to repay the debt he owes to those who gave him so much, by passing on that knowledge to the next generation.

As an Emmy nominated, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences member, of course, he would still like to someday deliver that "thank the Academy" speech. Because that would mean that he was more than an Emmy nominee. He already is.

Jeff Coopwood - Resume

Game Shows

$100,000 Fortune Hunt | Know Your Heritage

Film

Note: Italics denotes voicework only

• Just Mercy
  
• Black Panther
  
• Bolden
  
• Marshall
  
• American Pastoral
  
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
  
• Gods of Egypt
  
• The New Normal
  
• Detroit Cycles
  
• Higher
  
• Onset
  
• Neo Fresco: Sublimation
  
• Roids
  
• School Dance
  
• My Name Is John
  
• El Golpe
  
• Alex Cross
  
• Supernumerary
  
• Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
  
• A House Divided
  
• The Wild Thornberrys Movie
  
• Beethoven's 4th
  
• Love & Basketball
  
• The Green Mile
  
• Chill Factor
  
• The Wood
  
• The Rugrats Movie
  
• Why Do Fools Fall in Love
  
• Hoodlum
  
• Rosewood
  
• Star Trek: First Contact
  
• The Preacher's Wife
  
• High School High
  
• The Island of Dr. Moreau
  
• A Time to Kill
  
• The Rock
  
• The Great White Hype
  
• Cutthroat Island
  
• Dead Presidents
  
• Virtuosity
  
• Tank Girl
  
• Blankman
  
• Wyatt Earp
  
• I'll Do Anything
  
• My Father The Hero
  
• Cool Runnings
  
• The Fugitive
  
• Weekend at Bernie's II
  
• What's Love Got to Do with It
  
• Indecent Proposal
  
• CB4
  
• The Meteor Man
  
• Leap of Faith
  
• Under Siege
  
• Captain Ron
  
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  
• Boomerang
  
• The Kill Reflex
  
• Things Are Tough All Over
  

TV Commercials

* (Telly Award: winner, 2009)

• AT&T

  

• Walmart

  

• Empower

  

• FanDuel

  

• NBA Finals

  

• Chevrolet

  

• FTX

  

• Intel
  
• Sandy Hook Promise
  
• Toyota
  
• Heinz
  
• Samsung
  
• Dunkin' Donuts
  
• Adobe
  
• BMO Harris Bank
  
• TruGreen
  
• Diet Dr. Pepper
  
• Bydureon
  
• Libby's Vienna Sausages
  
• Seagrams Caribbean Quest
  
• Wells Fargo Bank
  
• Ameristar
  
• Union Bank of California
  
• United Football League
  
• California Lottery
  
• Redfish Cajun Grill & Bar
  
• Atlanta Hawks, NBA Basketball Team
  
• US Bank
  
• CBS
  
• Honda
  
• Union Bank
  
• Wisconsin Bell
  
• Baltimore Area Ford Dealers
  
• Century 21
  
• Illinois State Lottery
  
• Olympia Fields Ford
  
• Lynden Beauty Academy
  
• The Business Center
  
• FOX News/WFLD-TV
  
• Marshall's Field's Stores
  
• PBS
  
• Burger King
  
• Albertson's
  
• Lincoln Mercury
  
• Adidas
  
• Home Depot
  
• IBM
  
• Southwest Airlines
  
• TGI Fridays
  
• Placeware
  
• U.S. Cellular
  
• Cox Cable
  
• American Cancer Society
  
• International Trachoma Initiative
  
• KFC
  
• Care
  
• Comcast
  
• Coca-Cola
  
• AT&T
  
• Compuserve
  
• McDonald's
  
• Tuffy
  
• Hyundai
  
• TimeWarner
  
• Alka Seltzer
  
• Blue Shield of California *
  
• Gerber Juices
  
• Blockbuster Music
  
• Make the Connection
  
• Budweiser
  
• Cadillac
  
• FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency
  
• Atlanta Falcons
  
• Public Transportation Associations of America
  
• Illinois Children's Home & Aid Society
  
• Sears
  
• National Clothing Stores
  
• Blue Cross/Blue Shield
  
• Nissan Maxima
  
• Bush Brothers Chili
  
• Verizon
  
• Fox Sports, Stanley Cup Finals
  
• Hillshire Farms
  
• Uncle Ben's Converted Rice
  
• Regions Bank
  
• U.S. Army
  
• MoneyGram
  
• American Hospital Association
  
• Amoco Ultimate Gasoline
  
• Zenith
  
• Jobs.com
  
• Arthur Andersen
  
• Discover
  
• Eli Lilly & Company
  
• Hilton
  

Voiceover

Animation | Commercial | Film & Television | Music | Promo | Announcer

Media

Film & Television | Hosting | Commercials | Short Films | Music Videos | Theatre & Music | Industrial Films | Music Clips

Press

Interviews | Publicity

Interviews
Traversing the Stars Podcast: Jeff Coopwood Loading the player... Seinfeld Podcast 152: Jeff Coopwood Loading the player... Interviewing Jeff Coopwood: Voice of the Borg in Star Trek: First Contact Loading the player... $100,000 Fortune Hunt: Media & Promo Loading the player... The Wiz Loading the player...
* Education a Key Role for Actor, Alumnus Jeff Coopwood
* Alumni Take on Role of Professor for a Day during Inaugural Event
* Interview with Jeff Coopwood
* (Off-site)
WGCI Radio: $100,000 Fortune Hunt, Chicago, IL, The Diane Thompson Show, 1990 Loading the player... WGCI Radio: Know Your Heritage, Chicago, IL, Saturday Morning Rush, February 3, 1990 Loading the player... WGCI Radio: Know Your Heritage, Chicago, IL, Banks & Company, February, 1990 Loading the player... WGCI Radio: Know Your Heritage, Chicago, IL, Banks & Company, February 1, 1990 Loading the player... WKAT Radio: I Am, The Louise Riley Show, Miami Beach, FL, 1973 Loading the player...
Publicity
Legitimate Violence and Persuasive Force | Finian's Rainbow | Big River | Ain't Misbehavin' | Know Your Heritage | $100,000 Fortune Hunt | West Memphis Mojo | Seven Brides for Seven Brothers | Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat | 42nd Street | My One and Only | Rodgers & Hart: A Musical Celebration | Godspell | Irma La Douce | Hair | Purlie | Misc
"Legitimate Violence and Persuasive Force"
"Finian's Rainbow"
"Big River"
"Ain't Misbehavin'"
"Know Your Heritage"
"$100,000 Fortune Hunt"
"West Memphis Mojo"
"Seven Brides for Seven Brothers""
"Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat"
"42nd Street"
"My One and Only"
"Rodgers & Hart: A Musical Celebration"
"Godspell"
"Irma La Douce"
"Hair"
"Purlie"
Misc