David Boreanaz
David Boreanaz is an actor, born 1969.
Three consecutive network leads is a rare career shape, and David Boreanaz has one. He was cast as Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the vampire with a soul who spends most of his screen time managing guilt, and the part worked well enough that it was handed its own series in 1999, where Angel was rebuilt as a private investigator and Boreanaz had to carry a show rather than complicate someone else's.
Then he switched register completely. Seeley Booth on Bones is an FBI agent with a Catholic streak and no patience for scientific hedging, and the show ran from 2005 to 2017 largely on the friction between his gut and Temperance Brennan's data. What Boreanaz is genuinely good at surfaces there: he can play a man who is not the smartest person in the room without playing him as stupid, and he can make plain procedural exposition sound like somebody losing his temper.
SEAL Team took that in a harder direction. Jason Hayes is a Navy master chief whose competence is never in question and whose head increasingly is, and the series stayed with him from 2017 to 2024 through material most network dramas would have flinched at. Away from acting Boreanaz moved into producing and directing, and he is attached to a Rockford Files reboot set for 2027 as both star and producer. Film has been the thinner column: the slasher Valentine, The Crow: Wicked Prayer, Hal Jordan in the animated Justice League: The New Frontier.
Movies (8)
TV (8)
Where to start with David Boreanaz
Two obvious doors. If you want the actor at his most iconic, take Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then Angel. The first shows the character as a complication in someone else's story; the second asks whether he can hold his own noir-inflected series, and the answer is mostly yes once it stops trying to be Buffy in Los Angeles.
If you want the actor at his most comfortable, go straight to Bones. It is long, formulaic and completely watchable, and Booth is the role that best uses his gift for irritated sincerity. SEAL Team is the serious one, quieter and grimmer, and the better choice if procedural banter is not your thing.
The films are optional. Valentine is a period piece from the late slasher revival, Justice League: The New Frontier is a solid animated adaptation where the voice work is a genuine surprise, and The Crow: Wicked Prayer is for the curious only.