Avery Brooks is best known for his television roles as Captain Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, as Hawk on Spenser: For Hire and its spinoff A Man Called Hawk, and as Dr Bob Sweeney in the Academy Award–nominated film American History X Brooks has delivered a variety of other performances to a great deal of acclaim.
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Avery Brooks been inducted in the College of Fellows of the American Theatre and bestowed with the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre by the Shakespeare Theatre Company.
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Avery Brooks was born in Evansville, Indiana, the son of Eva Lydia, a choral conductor and music instructor, and Samuel Brooks, a union official and tool and die worker.
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Avery Brooks's maternal grandfather, Samuel Travis Crawford, was a singer who graduated from Tougaloo College in 1901.
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Avery Brooks's maternal uncle Samuel Travis Crawford was a member of the Delta Rhythm Boys.
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Avery Brooks later completed his Bachelor of Arts plus a Master of Fine Arts from Rutgers University in 1976, becoming the first African American to receive an MFA in acting and directing from Rutgers.
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In 1985, Avery Brooks was cast in the role of Hawk on the ABC television detective series Spenser: For Hire, based on the mystery series published by Robert Parker.
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In landing the title role, Avery Brooks became the third Black-American male actor in a starring role in a first-run television drama following Bill Cosby, who co-starred with Robert Culp in the NBC spy series I Spy from 1965 to 1968, Clarence Williams III, who starred as undercover police detective Linc Hayes in the iconic ABC "hippie" cop drama The Mod Squad from 1968 to 1973, and Philip Michael Thomas, who starred opposite Don Johnson in Miami Vice.
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Avery Brooks returned to play Hawk in four Spenser television movies: Spenser: Ceremony, Spenser: Pale Kings and Princes, Spenser: The Judas Goat and Spenser: A Savage Place.
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Avery Brooks is arguably best known for his role as Benjamin Sisko on the syndicated science-fiction television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which ran for seven seasons from 1993 to 1999.
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Avery Brooks won the role of Commander Benjamin Sisko by beating 100 other actors from all racial backgrounds to become the first Black-American captain to lead a Star Trek series.
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Avery Brooks directed nine episodes of the series, including "Far Beyond the Stars", an episode focusing on racial injustice.
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Avery Brooks, like his character, is a very complex man.
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Avery Brooks is not a demanding or ego-driven actor, rather he is a thoughtful and intelligent man who sometimes has insights into the character that no one else has thought about.
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Avery Brooks has been unfailingly polite and a classy guy in all my dealings with him.
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In 1984, Avery Brooks received critical praise for his featured role in PBS's American Playhouse production of Half Slave, Half Free: Solomon Northup's Odyssey, directed by Gordon Parks.
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Avery Brooks appeared in the 1985 television movie adaptation of Finnegan Begin Again.
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Avery Brooks was nominated for an Ace Award in the category of best Actor in a movie or miniseries for that said role.
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Avery Brooks voiced the character of Nokkar in an episode of the Disney animated series Gargoyles.
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In 2001, Avery Brooks narrated and appeared in a series of commercials for IBM.
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Avery Brooks has taught at Oberlin College and Case Western Reserve University.
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From 1993 to 1996, Avery Brooks was artistic director for the National Black Arts Festival in association with Rutgers University.
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Deep baritone singer, Avery Brooks has performed on stage with Butch Morris, Lester Bowie, and Jon Hendricks.
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Avery Brooks recorded an album with saxophone player James Spaulding, James Spaulding Plays the Legacy of Duke Ellington .
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In 2009, Avery Brooks released his debut album, Here, an album of jazz and blues covers, as well as spoken word.
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In 2020, Avery Brooks was featured on The DX Experiment's debut album, Black In My Own Way, an album of experimental music with spoken word.
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Avery Brooks received critical acclaim in Phillip Hayes Dean's play Paul Robeson.
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Avery Brooks portrayed the life of the famous singer, actor, and civil-rights activist in a one-man, critically acclaimed biographical drama.
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Avery Brooks has performed the role since 1982 at the Westwood Playhouse in Los Angeles, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and the Longacre Theater on Broadway.
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Avery Brooks subsequently starred in Othello at the Folger Shakespeare Festival and Fences at the Repertory Theater of St Louis, Missouri, in 1990.
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Avery Brooks appeared in the title role of King Lear at Yale's Repertory Theatre.
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In 2005, Avery Brooks again starred as Othello, this time at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in a production directed by renowned Michael Kahn.
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Avery Brooks was one of 15 actors of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC, to be honored with the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre in 2007.
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Avery Brooks returned to the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Fall 2007 to play the title role in Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine.
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Avery Brooks's performance was interrupted when an injury made it necessary for him to take time off to heal.
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In September 2008, Avery Brooks played Willy Loman in a production of Death of a Salesman at Oberlin College.
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Avery Brooks played Dr Bob Sweeney in American History X alongside Edward Norton.
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Avery Brooks played mob boss Paris in The Big Hit, co-starring Mark Wahlberg.
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Avery Brooks has hosted several documentaries and served as narrator in such features as the IMAX film Africa's Elephant Kingdom.
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In May 2007, Brooks recorded the narration for the documentary The Better Hour, which is about the life of William Wilberforce, the man who led the campaign for the end of slavery in the United Kingdom in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
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Avery Brooks provided the narration for the BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs when it aired in North America on the Discovery Channel.
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In 2009, Avery Brooks narrated a special documentary for the National Geographic channel, titled Drain the Ocean.
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In 2011, Avery Brooks was interviewed by William Shatner in the feature-length documentary The Captains.
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In 2013, Avery Brooks began to narrate the Christian or Abrahamic series The Bible's Greatest Secrets, on the American Heroes Channel, which attempted to use interpretations of events found in the Bible to illuminate new archeological findings and interpretations of history, and to use interpretations of new archeological findings to illuminate interpretations of events found in the Bible.
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Avery Brooks had previously starred in a 1988 television film based upon the book, Roots: The Gift.
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Since 1976, Avery Brooks has been married to Vicki Lenora Avery Brooks, an assistant dean at Rutgers University.
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