Shemar Moore 1970–

Actor

At a Glance…

Sources

Over two million viewers a day tune into to watch Shemar Moore on the CBS daytime drama The Young and the Restless. Cast in 1994 to play a heartthrob photographer on the popular soap, Moore is a lanky, well-built former college athlete whose muscular physique has won him legions of devoted female fans. Magazines trumpet articles on the actor with such lines as” Is Shemar Moore the Finest Thing on TV?” What makes Moore even more appealing, however, is the unequivocal adoration he displays for the main woman in his life.” I might be on television, but she’s right there with me,” he said of his mother, Marilyn Moore, in a 1998 Ebony interview with Aldore Collier.” I couldn’t do this without her. I love her to death.”

The only child of an interracial marriage, Moore spent his formative years in Boston and northern California. Even more formative, however, were the pre-school years in the Persian Gulf sheikdom of Bahrain, next door to Saudi Arabia. His parents had been free spirits in the early 1970s—his name is a combination of the first three letters of each of theirs—and first they lived in Denmark after his birth, trying to flee racial unrest in America. When their marriage broke up, his mother took a job as a teacher in Bahrain; thus Moore was enrolled in a school for the children of British nationals, where he soon picked up a plummy accent. As he recalled in an interview with Michael J. Maloney for Seventeen, “I was this little black kid with a lopsided Afro and clogs, saying ‘Mummy, can I have some tea?’”

Around the time he started first grade, Marilyn Moore took her son to Boston, where he encountered racism and racial epithets for the first time in his life. But his mother, he would later note, instilled in him a deep sense of self-esteem and balance.” I was taught to believe in myself, not thinking I was different because I wasn’t of one race,” he told Devona Dolliole in Black Collegian. As a teen, they moved once more—back to the Oakland, California area where he had been born. During his high school years in nearby Palo Alto, he excelled in baseball, but did poorly in class out of sheer teen laziness, he admitted. His mother laid down the law.” If you want to convince him of something he doesn’t want to do, you’d better have a hard hairbrush,” Marilyn Moore told People magazine. It was an assertion her son firmly seconded, saying his mother’s strict ways definitely made a positive impact.” She kept things in perspective,” Moore himself said in the same article.” She gave me reality checks.”

Despite his status as a standout athlete, Moore harbored a secret love of the performing arts as a teen, but was too nervous to try it out for himself.” When you’re a jock, it’s not cool to hang around with theater people,” Moore told Collier in Ebony.” I was too shy to get out there.” After graduating from high school in 1988, he won a partial athletic scholarship to nearby Santa Clara University. He began modeling to pay for the remainder. There, he played ball, dated a lot, majored in communications, and even dared to minor in theater arts. He

At a Glance…

Born April 20, 1970, in Oakland, CA; son of Sherrod and Marilyn (a business consultant) Moore. Education: Santa Clara University, BA, 1993.

Career: Cast as Malcolm Winters on the CBS daytime drama The Young and the Restless, 1994; made television appearances in 1994 on Living Single and Circus of the Stars, on the Jamie Foxx Show in 1996, and on Chicago Hope in 1997; made film debut in Hav’ Plenty, 1997; played lead in Butter, an HBO movie, 1998.

Awards: Nominated twice for Daytime Emmy Award as Outstanding Younger Leading Actor.

Addresses: Home—Los Angeles, CA. Office—The Young and the Restless, Bell-Phillip Television, 7800 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036.

graduated in 1993 with less than dean’s-list grades.” I’ve got all these friends who say, ‘I was an honor this, honor that,’” he joked with Dolliole in Black Collegian.” It was an honor for me to graduate.” Even several years later, Moore confesses to sometimes being still surprised that he earned a degree at all, but credits the perseverance it instilled in him as tremendously beneficial in the long run.” I wouldn’t have this type of success if I hadn’t graduated,” the successful actor told the magazine.

Moore was still modeling when he finished college, but in a way, found it even tougher than academics, as he admitted to Ebony’s Collier. To him, it was mentally tough.” I was too big or I wasn’t Black enough,” he said of the fashion game.” They didn’t know what I was. I was uni-race. I didn’t fit the clothes or I wasn’t pretty enough, wasn’t tough enough or Black enough.” But it was in the men’s fashion magazine GQ that a producer for the daytime drama The Young and the Restless noticed Moore, and invited him to audition. Nervous about his abilities, Moore hired an acting coach for the weekend for a thousand dollars. It was a good investment, since he won the role and began appearing on the highly-rated daytime drama in April of 1994. With his new paychecks Moore immediately began acting classes in earnest.” My looks may or may not have helped me get in the door of Hollywood,” he told Collier in Ebony.” But my looks have not kept me in Hollywood.”

Moore’s Y&R character, photographer Malcolm Win— ters, is a player, a man who once slept with brother’s wife when she was befuddled by flu medication. He and that actress, Victoria Rowell, are one-half of a quartet of African-American characters on the show whose family life is the stuff of which daytime plots are made. Moore’s on-screen wife Olivia, played by Tonya Lee Williams, is a doctor; Olivia’s sister on the show, Drucilla, is married to Kristoff St. John, who plays Moore’s on-screen brother. An estimated 2.3 million viewers tune in to watch what will happen next inside this successful, attractive, though rather unstable clan. The show has also proven extremely popular in Caribbean markets, and airs in Kenya and South Africa as well. In the U.S., it attracts more African-American viewers than any other soap. Celebrities such as Anita Baker, Janet Jackson, Aretha Franklin, and Whoopi Goldberg have all professed their addiction to the Y&R storylines.

Accordingly, Moore could soon count a massive number of enthusiastic fans after just a few months on the show. He is even pursued by women in shopping centers, and has been linked romantically with Toni Braxton, Halle Berry, and Lela Rochon. He remains a committed bachelor, however, who claims he must stick to a heavy workout schedule to keep his much-adored physique in shape. Twice Moore has been nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award as Outstanding Younger Leading Actor, and he also continues to work on his acting in hopes winning more feature-film parts. His first big-screen credit came in the 1997 film, Hav’ Plenty, and in 1998 he appeared the HBO movie Butier opposite Nia Long.” I have a big plan, but I go day-to-day,” he said in the Black Collegian interview.” I envision a goal I want manifested in five years, then I break it down… In this business, if you slip, you could fall off.”

Sources

Black Collegian, October, 1998, pp. 16-18.

Ebony, November, 1998, pp. 93-96.

Entertainment Weekly, August 25, 1995, p. 99.

Jet, April 6, 1998, pp. 53-54.

People, July 6, 1998, p. 69-70.

Seventeen, April, 1998, p. 128.

—Carol Brennan

MOORE, Shemar 1970–

PERSONAL

Full name, Shemar Franklin Moore; born April 20, 1970, in Oakland, CA; son of Sherrod and Marilyn Wilson (a business consultant) Moore. Education: Santa Clara University, B.A., communications and theatre arts, 1993.

Addresses: Manager—A Management, 9107 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 650, Beverly Hills, CA 90210.

Career: Actor. Worked as a model; appeared in television commercials and print advertisements; worked as a waiter.

Awards, Honors: Daytime Emmy Award nominations, outstanding younger actor in a drama series, 1996 and 1997, Image Award nominations, outstanding actor in a daytime drama series, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, outstanding actor in a daytime drama series, 1996 and 1997, Image awards, outstanding actor in a daytime drama series, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2005, Soap Opera Digest Award nominations, hottest male star, 1998 and 1999, Daytime Emmy Award, outstanding supporting actor in a drama series, 2000, all for The Young and the Restless; Black Reel nomination, best actor, independent film, 2005, for Motives.

CREDITS

Television Appearances; Series:

Malcolm Winters, The Young and the Restless (also known as Y&R), CBS, 1994–2002, 2004–2005.

Panelist, Match Game, syndicated, beginning 1998.

Host, Soul Train, syndicated, 1999–2003.

Detective Jesse Reese, Birds of Prey (also known as BOP), The WB, 2002–2003.

Special agent Derek Morgan, Criminal Minds, CBS, 2005–.

Television Appearances; Miniseries:

Lincoln Fleming, Mama Flora's Family, CBS, 1998.

Collins Farwell, Reversible Errors (also known as Scott Turow's "Reversible Errors"), CBS, 2004.

Television Appearances; Movies:

Freddy Roland, Butter (also known as Never 2 Big), HBO, 1998.

Jason Hunt, How to Marry a Billionaire: A Christmas Tale (also known as How to Marry a Billionaire), Fox, 2000.

Television Appearances; Specials:

Circus of the Stars Goes to Disneyland, ABC, 1994.

CBS Soap Break, CBS, 1995.

Candid Camera Looks at Love, CBS, 1997.

Judge, The 47th Miss Universe Pageant, CBS, 1998.

Host in Hawaii, The All-American Thanksgiving Parade, CBS, 1999.

Host, The 48th Miss USA Pageant, CBS, 1999.

Host, The Second Annual Soul Train Christmas Starfest, syndicated, 1999.

Host, Live at the Grammys, CBS, 2000.

Soul Train Christmas Starfest, syndicated, 2000.

Host, Divas and Kings 2000 and Beyond: The Soul Train 30th Anniversary, The WB, 2001.

The Fifth Annual Sears Soul Train Christmas Starfest, The WB, 2001.

Television Appearances; Awards Presentations:

Presenter, The 23rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards, CBS, 1996.

Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards, syndicated, 1996.

The 10th Annual Soul Train Music Awards, The WB, 1996.

The 12th Annual Soap Opera Awards, NBC, 1996.

Host, The 13th Annual Soap Opera Awards, NBC, 1997.

Presenter, The 24th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards, ABC, 1997.

Presenter, The 14th Annual Soap Opera Awards, NBC, 1998.

Cohost, The Fifth Annual Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards, syndicated, 1999.

Presenter, The 30th NAACP Image Awards, Fox, 1999.

Presenter, The 26th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards, CBS, 1999.

Himself, The 15th Annual Soap Opera Awards, 1999.

Host, The 14th Annual Soul Train Music Awards, 2000.

Host, The Sixth Annual Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards, syndicated, 2000.

Presenter, The 2000 Billboard Music Awards, Fox, 2000.

Presenter, The 2000 Essence Awards, Fox, 2000.

Presenter, The 2000 Trumpet Awards, TBS, 2000.

Himself, The 27th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards, ABC, 2000.

Host, The 15th Annual Soul Train Music Awards, syndicated, 2001.

Host, The Seventh Annual Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards, syndicated, 2001.

Himself, The 16th Annual Soul Train Music Awards, syndicated, 2002.

Presenter, The 32nd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards, CBS, 2005.

Television Appearances; Episodic:

Jon Marc, "The Last Temptation," Living Single, Fox, 1994.

Elister, "Kiss & Tell," The Jamie Foxx Show, The WB, 1996.

Sammy Stilton, "How to Be a Good Listener," Arli$$, HBO, 1997.

Himself, "The Heather Biblow Story," The Nanny, CBS, 1997.

Bobby Barrett, "Waging Bull," Chicago Hope, CBS, 1998.

Himself, Leeza, 1998.

Dakota Collins, "Baby Boom," For Your Love, The WB, 1999.

Earl Thomas, "Had to Be You," Moesha, UPN, 1999.

Ty, "Won't Power," Malcolm & Eddie, UPN, 1999.

Himself, "World Trade Center Benefit," Weakest Link, NBC, 2001.

Amani Love, "The Big Good Help Is Hard to Find Episode," Half & Half, UPN, 2004.

Himself, Steve Harvey's Big Time Challenge (also known as Big Time and Steve Harvey's "Big Time"), The WB, 2005.

Himself, The Oprah Winfrey Show (also known as Oprah), syndicated, 2005.

Himself, The View, ABC, 2005.

Television Appearances; Pilots:

Zeke Donovan, Celebrity, Fox, 2000.

Detective Jesse Reese, Birds of Prey (also known as BOP), The WB, 2002.

Lionel, Chasing Alice, The WB, 2003.

Detective Dan Harney, Nikki & Nora, UPN, 2004.

Special agent Derek Morgan, Criminal Minds, CBS, 2005.

Film Appearances:

Chris, Hav Plenty, Miramax, 1997.

Box Marley, Wanderlust Pictures, 2000.

Terry White, The Brothers, Screen Gems/Sony Pictures Entertainment, 2001.

Emery Simms, Motives, Columbia/TriStar Home Video, 2004.

Ricky Johnson, Greener, Solefilms/75,25 Entertainment, 2004.

The Seat Filler, Strange Fruit Films, 2004.

Orlando, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Lions Gate Films, 2005.

Some sources cite an appearance as Jason Miles, It's Goin' Down, 2000.

Major Tours:

The Fabric of a Man, U.S. cities, 2001.

RECORDINGS

Videos:

Himself, The Making of "Motives" (short documentary), Columbia/TriStar Home Video, 2004.

Music Videos:

Toni Braxton, "How Many Ways," 1995.

OTHER SOURCES

Periodicals:

Ebony, November, 1998, p. 93; April, 2001, p. 148.

Jet, May 28, 2001, p. 58.

People Weekly, July 6, 1998, pp. 69-70; November 15, 1999, p. 143; July 2, 2001, p. 66.

Soap World, May, 2000, pp. 18-19.

TV Guide, June 13, 1998, p. 18; October 12, 2002, p. 14; September 26, 2004, p. 49.