Giancarlo Esposito is one of the most respected actors working today. Born April 26, 1958, in Copenhagen, Denmark (as per Famous Birthdays), 66-year-old Esposito has made considerable marks in television and film, beginning his career in the 1970s.
As per IMDb, his most famous TV roles include Mike Giardello in Homicide: Life on the Street, Sidney Glass, aka the Magic Mirror, in Once Upon a Time, Moff Gideon in The Mandalorian, Gus Fring in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and Stan Edgar in The Boys.
Notable movie credits include Trading Places (1983), Maximum Overdrive (1986), School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Malcolm X (1992), The Usual Suspects (1995), Ali (2001), Rabbit Hole (2010), Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015), The Jungle Book (2016), Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2018), Coda (2019), Line of Duty (2019), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023), Abigail (2024), MaXXXine (2024), and Megalopolis (2024). He’ll also appear in 2025’s Captain America: Brave New World.
However, as lengthy and illustrious as Esposito’s career is, his background is equally fascinating. So what is it?
What is Giancarlo Esposito’s ethnicity?
Although Esposito is Danish by birth and was initially raised in Europe (he lived in Rome for a while), he’s an American citizen, having moved to Manhattan with his family when he was only six.
His ethnicity, however, is mixed. According to Black Past, his father, Giovanni Esposito, was an Italian stagehand and carpenter from Naples, and his mother, Elizabeth Foster, was an African-American opera and nightclub singer from Alabama. That means Esposito is half-Italian and half-African-American.
On that note, it’s intriguing that his first film role was playing “Puerto Rican teenager” in the 1979 Canadian sports drama Running!