Charismatic, versatile and eloquently formidable, the Delroy Lindo that most audiences know is a dynamic force on both stage and screen. Whether playing manic West Indian Harlem numbers-runner Archie in Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” or sympathetic jazz musician and father Woody Carmichael in “Crooklyn,” Lindo’s sensitivity and ability to uncover what makes people tick has long been admired. A prolific actor, Lindo has been in more than 45 films and television shows as well as dozens of stage productions.

Spark goes inside the development and rehearsal process as Lindo adds the role of director to his impressive list of credits, with a critically acclaimed 2007 production of Tanya Barfield’s “The Blue Door” for Berkeley Repertory Theatre. For this two-man tour de force production, Lindo directs the actors through a journey in time told through the eyes of an African American mathematics professor haunted by the stories and dreams of his ancestors.

Lindo’s film career, which has interspersed with his theater work, started in 1979 with a small role in “More American Graffiti.” Throughout the 1990s, Lindo appeared in a wide range of good guy and bad guy roles in both mainstream and indie films, from Rodney Little in “Clockers” to the colonel in John Woo’s “Broken Arrow” to Mr. Rose in “Cider House Rules,” for which he earned a Screen Actor’s Guild nomination. In 2006, Lindo starred as FBI agent Latimer King in the short-lived NBC drama “Kidnapped.”

The only son of Jamaican immigrants, Delroy Lindo was born and raised in England, but he has lived in the Bay Area since the 1970s and is a graduate of the American Conservatory Theater. In 1982, Lindo made his Broadway debut in Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold and the Boys,” playing the role of Willie. In 1987, playing Walter Lee Younger in “A Raisin in the Sun” won him a Helen Hayes Award nomination as well as an NAACP Image Award for Best Actor. He earned additional nominations for the NAACP Image Award (one in 1992 for his role in “Malcolm X” and two in 1996, for his work in HBO’s “Soul of the Game” and for his role opposite Mel Gibson in “Ransom”). In 1988, Lindo earned a Tony nomination for his work as Herald Loomis in August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”

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