Joe Spano Bio, Age, Net Worth, Wife, Movies TV Shows, NCIS

Joe Spano Biography

Joseph Peter Spano is an American actor well known for his roles as Lt. Henry Goldblume on Hill Street Blues and as FBI Special Agent Tobias C. Fornell on NCIS.

Joe Spano Age

Joe Spano Career

Joe Spano was a member of the San Francisco improv group The Wing, and in college debuted as Paris in a production of Romeo and Juliet in 1967. Spano helped found the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 1968, appearing in its first production, and stayed with the company for 10 years. In the late 1970s he moved to Hollywood, landing guest shots on TV and bit roles in American Graffiti (1973) and The Enforcer (1976/I).

In Hill Street Blues Spano appeared as Henry Goldblume during the entire seven-year run of the series, first as a detective sergeant, later as a lieutenant. Goldblume was one of Hill Street Precinct Captain Frank Furillo’s trusted junior officers, serving at times as a hostage negotiator and gangs relations officer. The character was sympathetic to crime victims, which sometimes came into a conflict with his duties as a police officer. Joe Spano was one of many actors appearing through each episode, which typically had several interwoven story lines.

After Hill Street Blues ended, he won recurring roles in television police shows Murder One in 1995 and NYPD Blue in 1993, again as a detective, and has appeared regularly in 27 television movies and 20 television shows like The X-Files (episodes Tempus Fugit and Max), Mercy Point and Amazing Grace. In 1988, Spano won the Emmy award for Best Guest Actor in a Drama Series for a role he played in an episode of Midnight Caller. Spano has appeared in 27 feature films, including working alongside Tom Hanks in Apollo 13 and Richard Gere and Edward Norton in Primal Fear. His credits are often confused with Australian actor Joseph Spano.

Spano made his Broadway debut in the Roundabout Theater revival of Arthur Miller’s The Price in 1992, with Eli Wallach, which was nominated for a Tony for Best Revival. West coast stage credits include Eduardo Pavlovsky’s Potestad and David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow and American Buffalo, for which Spano was awarded an LA Drama Critics Circle Award. At the Rubicon Theater in Ventura he has played General Burgoyne in Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple, Greg in A. R. Gurney’s Sylvia and Vladimir in Waiting for Godot.

He is a member of the Antaeus Theater Company and a founding member of three other theater companies. Spano played a seductive vampire in the cult musical Dracula: A Musical Nightmare in a small LA theatre. He also appeared in the TV movie Brotherhood of Justice alongside Keanu Reeves and Kiefer Sutherland.

Joe Spano NCIS

Spano has been a recurring character in NCIS since its premiere episode, “Yankee White”, portraying FBI Special Agent Tobias Fornell, the FBI counterpart to NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, portrayed by Mark Harmon. In Season 15, Fornell is no longer with the FBI, but a private investigator. The on-screen rapport between the two actors has made Joe Spano much more visible to viewers than his number of actual screen appearances would suggest.

Spano is well known for straight dramatic roles but, in NCIS, has adapted to the comedic/drama style of the show. His character, Fornell, holds rank in the FBI equivalent to that held by the NCIS main character, Gibbs. Thus Spano is given key lines and comic moments as a foil for Gibbs and, in some episodes, equal screen time with the main lead. The two characters usually address each other by their first names.

Two episodes have used the Fornells’ personal life as the main crux of an NCIS episode: one where Fornell’s daughter is imperiled and another where Fornell’s career is imperiled. In each episode, it is the friendship between Fornell and Gibbs which is invoked in order to involve NCIS in the resolution of an FBI agent’s crisis. Further indicating his status on the show, Spano’s Fornell was written into the Gibbs backstory, by Fornell having been married to Gibbs’ first ex-wife, linking their private lives and also their professional lives and further establishing their equivalence of status. Spano’s character has also been involved in operations run by other agencies, including both Homeland Security and the CIA, as the liaison between those agencies and NCIS.

Notable episodes of NCIS, featuring Spano in a prime role, include the Episode 1, Season 1 “Yankee White”, Episode 2 of Season 4 “Escaped” and also episodes titled “Seadog”, “Enigma”, “Reveille”, “The Boneyard”, “Conspiracy Theory”, “Twilight”, “Kill Ari: Part 2”, “Under Covers”, “Frame up”, “Smoked”, “Brothers in Arms” and “Angel of Death”, all of which are available for searching on the NCIS pages. Joe Spano continued to appear in season 5 of NCIS, begining with “Identity Crisis” about an FBI operation gone wrong and “Internal Affairs” when NCIS is being investigated for murder.

In season 6, Spano appears in the episodes “Nine Lives” and “Semper Fidelis”. In season 7, Spano appears in the episodes “Jack-Knife” and “Moonlighting”. He continues to appear in the following seasons as well, in the episodes “Tell-All” and “Short Fuse” (both season 8), “Devil’s Triangle”, and “Life Before His Eyes” (both season 9), “Extreme Prejudice”, “Devil’s Trifecta”, “Damned If You Do” (all season 10), and “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot”, “Past, Present, and Future”, “Devil’s Triad”, “Crescent City (Part I)”, and “Crescent City (Part II)” (all season 11), “Cabin Fever” (season 12), “Dead Letter” and “Family First” (season 13), “Privileged Information” (season 14) and “Burden of Proof”, “Keep Your Friends Close” (Fornell is no longer with the FBI as of this episode) and “Keep Your Enemies Closer” (all season 15).

Joe Spano Movies and TV Shows