People

Edward James Olmos

Acting · follow into films and chains

Biography

Edward James Olmos (born February 24, 1947) is an American actor, director, producer, and activist. He is best known for his roles as Lieutenant Martin "Marty" Castillo in Miami Vice (1984–1989), actor in and director of American Me (1992), William Adama in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica (2004–2009), teacher Jaime Escalante in Stand and Deliver (1988), and Detective Gaff in Blade Runner (1982), and its sequel Blade Runner 2049 (2017). In 2018, he played the father of two members of an outlaw motorcycle club in the FX series Mayans MC. For his work in Miami Vice, Olmos won the 1985 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film. For his performance in Stand and Deliver, Olmos was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. He is also known for his roles as patriarch Abraham Quintanilla in the film Selena, narrator El Pachuco in both the stage and film versions of Zoot Suit, and the voice of Chicharrón in Coco. Over the course of his career, Olmos has been a pioneer for more diversified roles and images of Hispanics in the U.S. media. His notable direction, production, and starring roles for films, made-for-TV movies, and TV shows include Wolfen, Triumph of the Spirit, Talent for the Game, American Me, The Burning Season, My Family/Mi Familia, Caught, 12 Angry Men, The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca, Walkout, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, American Family, and Dexter. Description above from the Wikipedia article Edward James Olmos, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Notable films

Where to start

Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.

Blade Runner 2049

As Gaff

Blade Runner

Appears in a KinoChain journey

Coco

As Chicharrón (voice)

Office Romance

As Captain Jack Cruz

Battlestar Galactica

As Commander Adama

2 Guns

As Papi Greco

The Green Hornet

As Michael Axford

A Dog's Way Home

As Axel

Chains

KinoChain journeys

Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.

Browse all chains

The Weight of the Cape: Inheriting a Legacy You Never Asked For

Before the multiverse had a use for her, Kara Zor-El's first outing wasn't framed as destiny, it was framed as a mistake to fix. She loses the Omegahedron, the...

8 films

The Art of Listening

From the whisper of a surveillance tape to the roar of a wartime beach, these eight films prove that sound is not just heard, it is felt. A chain of masterpiece...

7 films

The Mind's Eye: Crime Films of Obsession and Interiority

From a detective's haunted pursuit to a killer's fractured psyche, this chain traces cinema's most intimate crime stories, where the real action happens inside...

8 films

20 Home Video Releases Every Film Obsessive Should Own

There was a brief, glorious period in the late 1990s and early 2000s when buying a film on home video felt less like acquiring a product and more like being han...

20 films

Topics