Bill Duke

William Henry Duke Jr. is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for his physically imposing frame, Duke works primarily in the action and crime drama genres often as a character related to law enforcement.

As a director, he is known for his works dealing in the Black American experience, and has been called the "Godfather of African American Cinema." Duke began his career as a theatre actor, before making his film debut as aspiring revolutionary Abdullah Mohammed Akbar in the ensemble comedy Car Wash (1976). Frequently a character actor, he has starred opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando (1985) and Predator (1987), and has appeared in films like American Gigolo (1980), Bird on a Wire (1990), Menace II Society (1993), Payback (1999), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), and Mandy (2018). In television, he is best known as Agent Percy Odell in Black Lightning (2018-2021).

Duke's directorial debut was The Killing Floor, which aired as an episode of American Playhouse and won the Special Jury Prize at the 1984 Sundance Film Festival. He directed a film adaptation of Chester Himes' Harlem Detective series, A Rage in Harlem (1991), which was nominated for the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or. He also directed the neo-noir thriller Deep Cover (1992) and the musical comedy Sister Act 2 (1993).

He has directed episodes of numerous television series including Cagney & Lacey, Dallas, Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, and The Twilight Zone.