Jennifer Esposito
Jennifer Esposito is an actor, born 1973.
Late-nineties New York is where this filmography lives. Esposito, born in the city in 1973, appeared on Spin City as Stacey Paterno and then went straight into the run that made her recognisable: Ms Janus in He Got Game, Nancy in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Ruby in Summer of Sam, Solina in Dracula 2000.
She is very good at one specific thing, which is playing the person who says the sentence everybody else in the room is working around. It made her a natural fit for law enforcement, and she has played it repeatedly and differently: Det. Sandra Cassidy in Don't Say a Word, Lt Marta Robbins in Taxi, Jackie Curatola in Blue Bloods, Alex Quinn in NCIS from 2016 to 2017, and a CIA deputy director in The Boys from 2019 to 2020.
The best-known film is Crash, where she plays Ria, and it is a decent performance sitting inside a film whose reputation has aged badly. The more interesting credits are the odd ones: Welcome to Collinwood, The Master of Disguise, Nina Solloway in The Affair, the voice of Tina Russo in The Looney Tunes Show, Mob Town. She has also moved into directing, which the acting record does not particularly predict.
Movies (26)
- Crash (2005)
- Taxi (2004)
- I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)
- F+ (2025)
- Don't Say a Word (2001)
- Dracula 2000 (2000)
- He Got Game (1998)
- Summer of Sam (1999)
- The Master of Disguise (2002)
- The Bachelor (1999)
- She's Funny That Way (2015)
- Speed Kills (2018)
- Destino (2003)
- Conspiracy (2008)
- Mary (2019)
- Mob Town (2019)
- Somewhere in Queens (2023)
- Made (2001)
- Welcome to Collinwood (2002)
- Bending The Rules (2012)
- American Crude (2008)
- Snow Wonder (2005)
- The Wish List (2010)
- No Looking Back (1998)
- Breakin' All the Rules (2004)
- The Sunshine Boys (1996)
TV (14)
Where to start with Jennifer Esposito
Her best-known film is Crash and it is not the best way in. Try Summer of Sam instead, a sweaty, overheated New York picture where her register fits the material precisely and where she is doing more than the plot strictly requires of her.
On television, Blue Bloods is the long-running comfort watch and The Boys is the sharpest show she has been in, even if the part is smaller than it deserved to be. The Affair gives her a quieter dramatic register than she usually gets offered.
For the fun stuff, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and Dracula 2000 are late-nineties horror exactly as you remember it, Taxi is bad in ways that are not her fault, and Welcome to Collinwood is the small, likeable one nobody talks about.