Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito (born April 26, 1958) is an American film and television actor.

Esposito was born in Denmark to an Italian father who worked as a stagehand and carpenter, and an African-American mother who was an opera and nightclub singer. Esposito lived in Europe, New York, and Cleveland until the family settled in Manhattan when he was six. At the age of ten he made his Broadway debut in the short-lived Maggie Flynn. Additional New York theatre credits include The Me Nobody Knows, Lost in the Stars, Seesaw, and Merrily We Roll Along. In 2008 he will appear on Broadway as Gooper in an all-African-American production of Tennessee Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Debbie Allen. He will appear alongside stage veterans James Earl Jones (Big Daddy), Phylicia Rashad (Big Mama) and Anika Noni Rose (Maggie), as well as film actor Terrence Howard, who will make his Broadway debut as Brick.

Throughout most of the 1980s Esposito appeared in small roles in films such as Maximum Overdrive, King of New York, and Trading Places and TV shows such as Miami Vice and Spenser: For Hire, until landing his breakout role as a college student labeled as a "wannabe" by his peers in director Spike Lee's 1988 film School Daze. Over the next four years, Esposito and Lee collaborated on three other movies: Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, and Malcolm X.

Esposito is probably best known for his portrayal of Agent Mike Giardello on the TV crime drama Homicide: Life on the Street, a role he played from 1998 until the series' cancellation in 1999. Other TV credits include NYPD Blue, Law & Order, The Practice, and Fallen Angels: Fearless.

Esposito's career and choice of roles defies pigeonholing; he has portrayed drug dealers (Fresh), cops (The Usual Suspects), political radicals (Bob Roberts) and even a demonic version of the Greek God of Sleep from another dimension (Monkeybone.) His last notable roles were as Muhammed Ali's father in Ali and Nuyorican poet Miguel Piñero's friend and collaborator Miguel Algarín in Piñero, both released in 2001.

Esposito's most recent role was Robert Fuentes, a Miami businessman with shady connections, on the UPN television series South Beach. He recorded a public service announcement for Deejay Ra's 'Hip-Hop Literacy' campaign, encouraging reading about Muhammad Ali.

He is half African-American, half Italian. His mother was an opera singer, and his father was a stagehand/carpenter from Naples, Italy.

His mother was doing a nightclub gig on a split bill with Josephine Baker in Copenhagen around the time he was born.

Lived in Europe, New York City, and Cleveland until he, his older brother, Vincent, and their parents moved Manhattan when Giancarlo was six. During the boys' teens, the family lived in Elmsford (Westchester County), New York.

Two children, with McManigal, Shayne (b. 1997) and Kale (b. 1998)

Is a member of the Atlantic Theater Ensemble. Atlantic Theater is the theater company started by David Mamet and William H. Macy.

He has won two Obie Awards for his performances in Distant Fires and Zooman and the Sign.

Was member of the dramatic jury at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997.