Omar Epps of Traffik and Author of From Fatherless to Fatherhood

Today on The Neil Haley Show, The Total Tutor Neil Haley will interview Omar Epps of Traffik and Author of From Fatherless to Fatherhood.

Early Films

In 1992, shortly after graduating from high school, Omar Epps landed a starring role opposite the late hip-hop superstar Tupac Shakur in the film Juice, a tragic and violent story about four young men growing up in Harlem. A year later, Epps was cast as a star running back in the college football movie The Program. From that time on, despite standing at only 5'10" and preferring the arts to sports in real life, Epps was frequently typecast in athlete roles. He played baseball star Willie Mays Hays in Major League II (1994) and turned in a well-reviewed performance as a collegiate track star Higher Learning (1995). "It was always sort of a mystery to me, why I was always cast as some athlete," Epps would later admit.

Epps gained the attention of a huge national audience when he joined the cast of NBC's popular medical drama ER for the 1996-97 season. Epps portrayed Dr. Dennis Gant, a surgical resident overwhelmed by the pressures of the emergency room. In one of the show's most intense scenes ever, Dr. Gant tragically dies after either jumping or falling onto train tracks. Epps credits his role on ER with helping him break through to national fame. "They had 40 million viewers," he said. "People started putting the name with the face."