Boris Kodjoe

Boris Frederic Cecil Tay-Natey Ofuatey-Kodjoe (; born March 8, 1973) is a German actor and former model best known for his roles as Kelby in the 2002 film Brown Sugar, the sports-courier agent Damon Carter on the Showtime drama series Soul Food, Dr. Will Campbell on CBS's Code Black and a recurring character on FOX's The Last Man on Earth. He co-stars on BET's Real Husbands of Hollywood and the Grey's Anatomy spin-off, Station 19 as Robert Sullivan. Early life Kodjoe was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Ursula, a German psychologist of partially Jewish descent, and Eric Kodjoe, a Ghanaian physician who is of the Nzema people. His namesake is the Russian poet and writer Boris Pasternak. Kodjoe's matrilineal great-grandmother was Jewish and was murdered in the Holocaust; his maternal grandmother survived the war in hiding. Kodjoe's parents divorced when he was six years old. He grew up in the vicinity of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. He has a brother named Patrick and two sisters named Nadja and Lara. Career Kodjoe attended Virginia Commonwealth University on a tennis scholarship and graduated with a bachelor's degree in marketing in 1996. A four-year letterman on the Rams' men's tennis team, he is currently ninth in school history with 75 career singles wins. Tied for third in doubles victories with 66, he was paired with Jonas Elmblad on 37 of them, also third all-time. His brother Patrick Kodjoe played for VCU's basketball team. A back injury ended Boris' tennis aspirations, but he was quickly signed as a model and, soon after, entered acting. In 1995, he was featured in TLC's music video for "Red Light Special". Named one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" by People magazine in 2002, Kodjoe is perhaps best known as one of the 7 regular cast members from the Showtime drama Soul Food, which aired from 2000 to 2004. He appeared in the 2002 film Brown Sugar and starred in the short-lived sitcom Second Time Around with his Soul Food co-star Nicole Ari Parker, whom he eventually married. He played the role of David Taylor, the wayward son of Pastor Fred Taylor, in the October 2005 film The Gospel. He performed in a play called Whatever She Wants, starring Vivica A. Fox, and made an appearance on the fifth season of Nip/Tuck. He had a supporting role in the 2009 science fiction film Surrogates. Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw starred as a husband-and-wife secret agent team in 2010 J. J.