Richard Brooks

Richard Brooks is an American actor, singer and director who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and trained at New York's Circle in the Square Professional Theater School. He built a strong reputation in an Eugene O'Neill Theater Conference staging of August Wilson's Fences, then moved to Los Angeles for television work and early features such as The Hidden (1987), Off Limits (1988), Shakedown (1988) and Shocker (1989). His widest exposure came as assistant district attorney Paul Robinette on Law & Order from 1990 to 1993, a part he later revisited as a defense attorney on the same show. He took the villain's part in The Crow: City of Angels (1996), appeared in The Substitute that same year, and directed Johnny B Good (1998). He later played the bounty hunter Jubal Early on Firefly and Patrick Patterson on Being Mary Jane.