Kirk Acevedo

Poor, poor Miguel Alvarez. That man could not catch a break. Season one of Oz not only did he get thrown into Oswald Maximum Security Penitentiary, he is stabbed in the first ten minutes of the very first episode. He also endured the death of his baby and sliced open his own face in a little mental breakdown. He, like all the men in Oz was, on paper, a bad guy. But over the course of the series he had his moral ups and downs. Sure, he cut out the eyes of one of the prison guards to gain respect among the fellow Latino gang members (who didn't like him, because his skin was too pale) ...he later trained a seeing-eye dog for the very man he blinded, and made it bi-lingual! Alvarez escaped, then he came back, spent some time in solitary and was starved by the prison guards, tried to kill himself, everyone else tried to kill him at one point or another...really, Alvarez had a rich, rich story line. And it takes quite the actor to pull all that off, and not be annoying about it. Kirk Acevedo was the man for the job!

Alvarez was by no means my favorite character on Oz (that honor goes to Ryan O'Reily, of course. I don't just give my cats random first and last names, you know...) But I always rooted for him, even when he was doing bad things (mostly, I would say, "Alvarez, why would you do that!?") You wanted the character to do well, he wanted to do well, but in the end, he was his own worst enemy.

Kirk Acevedo is, as my friend Sarah describes "like a Method actor for serialized TV." True, I guess I don't know if Kirk subscribes to that certain practice of acting, but he is very, very intense. And, why just for serialized TV? Well, because the man hasn't been in a whole lot of movies. I am scanning his IMDB page and I recognize two titles he has been in. That's ok, in my opinion some of the best actors are on television.

As any character actor worth their salt, Kirk was appeared on Law and Order. He even starred in the one ill-fated spin-off, Law and Order: Trial by Jury (yea, I don't really remember it either.) Aside from that he appeared in two separate other Law and Order episodes, Original Recipe AND SVU Flavored.

As of late, Kirk has appeared on Fringe, and promptly killed off of Fringe, from what I understand. That's too bad, really.

I hope to see Kirk Acevedo more often. Not only is he a great actor, he is also one of those rare character actors who are also good-looking by, you know, non-quirky standards.