Taye Diggs

Actor

Name at birth: Scott Diggs

Taye Diggs made his film debut as the pretty Jamaican stud who pursues Angela Bassett in How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998, with Whoopi Goldberg). Diggs was a Broadway song and dance man before he was a movie star, having appeared in a revival of Carousel (1994-95) and the original production of Rent (1996-97). He has since become a leading man of films while maintaining a New York stage career. His films include House on Haunted Hill (1999, with Ali Larter); The Way of the Gun (2000, with Benicio Del Toro); Chicago (2002, starring Renee Zellweger); Equilibrium (2002, starring Christian Bale); and the 2005 film version of Rent. On Broadway he joined his wife, actress Idina Menzel, in the 2003 production of Wicked. On television he had recurring guest roles in Ally McBeal (in 2001) and Will and Grace (in 2006), and starred in the short-lived lawyer show Kevin Hill (2004), the supernatural cop show Day Break (2006) and the medical drama Private Practice (2007), a spin-off of the TV series Grey's Anatomy.

Extra credit: Taye is his nickname, the short form of "Scott-TAY"... He is the co-founder of dre.dance, a non-profit dance theater group in New York... Some sources list Brooklyn or Rochester, New York as his birthplace, but his official biography from ABC television says he was born in New Jersey and raised in Rochester, New York.