Acting

Michael Wright

Born April 30, 1956 · New York City, New York, USA

Died August 21, 2026 · aged 70

Michael Wright (April 6, 1956 — August 21, 2026) was an American film and television actor, who is best known for his role as Eddie Kane, Jr. in the 1991 Robert Townsend film The Five Heartbeats. Wright's body of work in television includes the 1983 NBC science fiction miniseries V, the 1984 sequel "V: The Final Battle" and on "V: The Series" as Elias Taylor, TV series "Miami Vice" 1987 episode "T…

Known For

The Interpreter

The Interpreter · 2005

The Interpreter

MovieCrimeThriller

After Silvia Broome, an interpreter at United Nations headquarters, overhears plans of an assassination, an American Secret Service agent is sent to investigate.

Money Talks

Money Talks · 1997

MovieActionComedy

Sought by police and criminals, a small-time huckster makes a deal with a TV newsman for protection.

The Wanderers

The Wanderers · 1979

The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’

The Principal

The Principal · 1987

MovieActionAdventure

Burglary. Drugs. Assault. Rape. The students at Brandel High are more than new Principal Rick Latimer bargained for. Gangs fight to control the school using knives - even guns - when they have to. When Latimer and the head of security try to clean up the school and stop the narcotics trade, they run up against a teenage mafia. A violent confrontation on the campus leads to a deadly showdown with the drug dealer's gang, and one last chance for Latimer to save his career... and his life.

Bedtime Eyes

Bedtime Eyes · 1987

Based on a polemic novel by Amy Yamada, Bedtime Eyes is about the intense love relationship between a second rate Japanese jazz singer and a black American GI on the margins of the law.

Sugar Hill

Sugar Hill · 1994

MovieDramaAction

In the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, the Mafia steps in when a drug dealer quits his partner and brother to lead a straight life with his girlfriend.

The Five Heartbeats

The Five Heartbeats · 1991

The Five Heartbeats

MovieDramaMusic

In the early 1960s, a quintet of hopeful, young African-American men form an amateur vocal group called The Five Heartbeats. After an initially rocky start, the group improves, turns pro, and rises to become a top flight music sensation. Along the way, however, the guys learn many hard lessons about the reality of the music industry.

El Cantante

El Cantante · 2006

MovieHistoryDrama

The rise and fall of salsa singer, Héctor Lavoe (1946-1993), as told from the perspective of his wife Puchi, who looks back from 2002.

Filmography

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The Interpreter

The Interpreter · 2005

The Interpreter

MovieCrimeThriller

After Silvia Broome, an interpreter at United Nations headquarters, overhears plans of an assassination, an American Secret Service agent is sent to investigate.

Marcus

Money Talks

Money Talks · 1997

MovieActionComedy

Sought by police and criminals, a small-time huckster makes a deal with a TV newsman for protection.

Aaron

The Wanderers

The Wanderers · 1979

The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’

Clinton

The Principal

The Principal · 1987

MovieActionAdventure

Burglary. Drugs. Assault. Rape. The students at Brandel High are more than new Principal Rick Latimer bargained for. Gangs fight to control the school using knives - even guns - when they have to. When Latimer and the head of security try to clean up the school and stop the narcotics trade, they run up against a teenage mafia. A violent confrontation on the campus leads to a deadly showdown with the drug dealer's gang, and one last chance for Latimer to save his career... and his life.

Victor Duncan

Bedtime Eyes

Bedtime Eyes · 1987

Based on a polemic novel by Amy Yamada, Bedtime Eyes is about the intense love relationship between a second rate Japanese jazz singer and a black American GI on the margins of the law.

Sugar Hill

Sugar Hill · 1994

MovieDramaAction

In the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, the Mafia steps in when a drug dealer quits his partner and brother to lead a straight life with his girlfriend.

Raynathan Skuggs

The Five Heartbeats

The Five Heartbeats · 1991

The Five Heartbeats

MovieDramaMusic

In the early 1960s, a quintet of hopeful, young African-American men form an amateur vocal group called The Five Heartbeats. After an initially rocky start, the group improves, turns pro, and rises to become a top flight music sensation. Along the way, however, the guys learn many hard lessons about the reality of the music industry.

Eddie

El Cantante

El Cantante · 2006

MovieHistoryDrama

The rise and fall of salsa singer, Héctor Lavoe (1946-1993), as told from the perspective of his wife Puchi, who looks back from 2002.

Shooting Gallery Man

Point Blank

Point Blank · 1998

MovieActionDrama

Convicted corporate criminal Howard engineers a prison break as he and a number of fellow inmates are being transferred to a new facility. The escapees storm a shopping mall and take a group of shoppers hostage (after killing many more of them) before making their demands. Only Rudy, a former mercenary and brother of one of the fugitives, can take out the criminals before more of the hostages die.

Sonny

Diminished Capacity

Diminished Capacity · 2008

Diminished Capacity

MovieComedyDrama

A Chicago journalist suffering from memory loss takes leaves from his job and returns to his rural hometown, where he bonds with his Alzheimer's impaired uncle Rollie and his old flame.

McCormick

Streamers

Streamers · 1983

Four young recruits about to be sent to Vietnam confront their prejudicial feelings toward one another when it's learned one of them is gay.

Carlyle

Jesse

MovieCrimeThriller

Nassau County, New York Police detective Jesse turns vigilante as she investigates her brother's murder and enters into a world of crime, corruption, and shocking deception.

Juan

Before I Self Destruct

Before I Self Destruct · 2009

Before I Self Destruct

MovieActionDrama

A coming of age story about an inner-city youth raised by a hardworking single mother. When his dream of becoming a basketball player fails to materialize, he finds himself employed in a supermarket. After his mother is tragically gunned down, Clarence (played by Jackson) is consumed by revenge and takes up a life of crime in order to support his younger brother.

First Victim

Dream House

Dream House · 1981

MovieComedyRomance

Vacationing Georgia construction worker (John Schneider) meets and falls for Manhattan's comely Director of Urban Renewal (Marilu Henner) and despite her initial rejection of him, sets out to build a dream house for both of them.

Mace

Hardrock

Hardrock · 2007

After a prominent judge's daughter dies from taking contaminated Ecstasy, the ensuing political scandal brings a world of grief to the city's street dealers in this gritty actioner. Under threat of being shut down, the city's top two rival dealers must work together to unearth the source of the tainted drug -- or take the fall themselves. Raekwon and Michael Wright star.

The Laundromat

The Laundromat · 1985

MovieTV MovieDrama

Two lonely women coincide at midnight in a laundromat, where they reveal their secrets.

Shooter Stevens

D'Curse

D'Curse · 2013

NYPD cop Ruda is a cop during the day and a religious Santerio (High Ranking Priest) of "Black Magic" by night. A curse is placed on the NYPD by the mother of a boy shot by cops. Now the NYPD needs Ruda to help break the curse.

Officer Ruda

Downtown: A Street Tale

Downtown: A Street Tale · 2004

Downtown: A Street Tale

A group of street kids find that the only way to make it through the day is to hold onto their dreams while their reality is eating out of dumpsters, turning tricks and squatting in abandoned buildings.

Rudy

2 Aces and a Dirty Heart

2 Aces and a Dirty Heart · 2017

2 Aces and a Dirty Heart

Two hustlers come up the hard way. When a group of savage stick up boys start terrorizing the city.

Redds

Piñero

Piñero · 2001

"Piñero" tells the story of the explosive life of a Latino icon, the gay poet-playwright-actor Miguel Piñero, whose urban poetry is recognized as a pre-cursor to rap and hip-hop. After doing time in hard-core Sing-Sing for petty thefts and drug dealing, Piñero's prison experiences developed into the 1974 Tony-nominated play Short Eyes. The resulting notoriety and fame was too much for the Latino bad-boy genius who retreated to the darker corners of New York City.

Edgar Bowser

Confessions of a Hitman

Confessions of a Hitman · 1994

Confessions of a Hitman

MovieCrimeDrama

A former hitman named Bruno steals some cash from his mobster uncle. He plans to go to Tahiti, but things go wrong and he finds himself headed for Vegas via Death Valley in a comandeered airport limousine, pursued by his uncle's henchmen and accompanied by a limo driver and an enigmatic blonde.

Charley

Raving

In New York City, a young woman forms a curious bond with a lonely older man after they encounter one another on a street corner.

Security Guard

Benny's Place

Benny's Place · 1982

MovieDramaTV Movie

Time begins to catches up to a tough factory worker who is feeling threatened by younger men at work and at play.

Jimmy Mills

We're Fighting Back

We're Fighting Back · 1981

We're Fighting Back

MovieActionDrama

Inspired by the exploits of New York's Guardian Angels, which began as a band of streetwise young people who formed an anti-crime subway patrol and went on to gain a national reputation and units in major cities around the country, this film unites three New York City youths as leaders of a citizens' patrol tackling gangs terrorizing merchants and local citizens.

Melvin Gilford

Miami Vice

Miami Vice · 1984

SeriesCrimeDrama

The story of the Miami Police Department's vice squad and its efforts to end drug trafficking and prostitution, centered on the unlikely partnership of Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs - who first meet when Tubbs is undercover in a drug cartel.

The Savage

SeriesCrimeDrama

The daily lives of prisoners in Emerald City, an experimental unit of the Oswald Maximum Security Prison where ingroups - Muslims, Latinos, Italians, Aryans - stick close to their mutual friends and terrorize their mutual enemies.

Omar White

New York Undercover

New York Undercover · 1994

New York Undercover

SeriesDramaCrime

New York Undercover is an American police drama The series stars Detective J.C. Williams and Detective Eddie Torres, two undercover detectives in New York City's Fourth Precinct who were assigned to investigate various crimes and gang-related cases.

Black Lightning

Black Lightning · 2018

Black Lightning

SeriesAction & AdventureSci-Fi & Fantasy

Jefferson Pierce is a man wrestling with a secret. As the father of two daughters and principal of a charter high school that also serves as a safe haven for young people in a New Orleans neighborhood overrun by gang violence, he is a hero to his community.

Lazarus Prime

SeriesSci-Fi & Fantasy

Once again, Earth is the battleground. But now the aliens whose human guise hides their true reptilian natures are wiser. They believe the secret to their survival on Earth lies in the DNA of the newly born half-human, half-spaceling Starchild. But that's something the world's Resistance Fighters cannot allow.

Elias Taylor

V: The Final Battle

V: The Final Battle · 1984

V: The Final Battle

SeriesSci-Fi & Fantasy

A small group of human resistance fighters fight a desperate guerilla war against the genocidal extra-terrestrials who dominate Earth.

Elias Taylor

SeriesAction & AdventureDrama

Fifty spaceships, each three miles across, hover ominously above Earth's major cities. The Visitors that emerge are humanlike in appearance and extend the hand of friendship. Our planet's resources are just what these aliens need to survive. And for its future survival, unsuspecting humankind will need... a miracle!

Elias Taylor