Background and career
Omar Hashim Epps (born July 20, 1973) is an American actor, rapper, and producer. He attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, prior to making his film debut alongside Tupac Shakur in the 1992 crime drama Juice. His film credits include Higher Learning (1995), Scream 2 (1997), The Wood (1999), In Too Deep (1999), Love & Basketball (2000), and Almost Christmas (2016), several of which are considered notable within Black cinema. His television work includes the role of Dr. Dennis Gant on the medical drama series ER, J. Martin Bellamy in Resurrection, Dr. Eric Foreman on the Fox medical drama series House from 2004 to 2012, Isaac Johnson in the TV series Shooter from 2016 to 2018, and Detective Malcolm Howard on the Starz crime drama Power Book III: Raising Kanan. He has won three NAACP Image Awards and was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Omar Epps was born in Brooklyn. His parents divorced during his childhood and he was raised by his mother, Bonnie Maria Epps, an elementary school principal. He lived in several Brooklyn neighborhoods while growing up (Bedford–Stuyvesant, East New York, and East Flatbush). He began writing poetry, short stories and songs at the age of ten. He attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, New York City's highly selective public high school for students with artistic talent. Before he started acting, he belonged to a rap group called Wolfpack which he formed with his cousin in 1991.
In 1992, Epps made his feature film debut playing a DJ alongside rapper 2Pac as the star of cinematographer Ernest Dickerson's directorial film debut Juice. The following year, Epps played one of several roles as an athlete, the first as a running back in the college football drama The Program alongside James Caan. In 1994, he returned to sports, as co-star of Major League II, taking over the role of center fielder Willie Mays Hayes from its originator, Wesley Snipes. His next athletic endeavor was playing a track and field star in John Singleton's Higher Learning, a look at the politics and racial tensions of college life. Epps led the cast in the 1996 BBC/HBO film Deadly Voyage, as a Ghanaian attempting to hide with other stowaways on a major commercial vessel leaving Africa. He won the best actor award at the Monte Carlo Television Festival for portraying Kingsley Ofusu in this true story about the plight of undocumented African stowaways hoping to reach America.
In his network television debut, Epps guest starred as Dr. Dennis Gant, a surgical intern struggling with depression, on the hit medical drama ER for several episodes in its third season. After his television work on ER, Epps returned to film in 1997 with a role as a giddy moviegoer, on a date with a woman played by Jada Pinkett Smith, who ends up an early victim of a psychopathic slasher in the blockbuster sequel Scream 2. Also in 1997, Epps starred in the fact-based HBO movie First Time Felon as a small-time criminal who goes through Chicago's boot camp reform system and undertakes a heroic flood rescue, only to be faced with the adjustment of re-entering society with the mark of ex-con. In 1999, Epps was cast as Linc in The Mod Squad. While The Mod Squad proved a critical and box-office bust, Epps's later 1999 effort The Wood offered him a serious and multi-dimensional role as Mike Tarver, narrator and lead of this critically acclaimed coming-of-age ensemble comedy.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth, in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
