There's one thing on his head that still bugs Shemar Moore about his big-screen
breakthrough. From early modeling days to primetime procedural mainstay,
he's had quite the transformational career.
Shemar Moore was born in Oakland, California in 1970 to a Black father named Sherrod and
an Irish-Canadian mother named Marilyn. According to Shemar, his dad was a Black
Panther who was friends with Tupac Shakur's mother. He was primarily raised by his mom,
in countries like Bahrain and Denmark before they returned to the United States when he was six.
As a kid, Moore was often chased by bullies, and when he threw rocks to defend himself,
he realized that he might have a knack for baseball. For a while his life lined up with
his talent. At the time, he lived in Boston, and he dreamed about joining the Red Sox. He
was even drafted by both the Sox and the Baltimore Orioles, but he opted to first
go to college at his mother's insistence. Unfortunately, an arm injury prevented
him from continuing his time on the diamond, and he began to look for other career paths.
"I was pretty good, but I will be the first to admit,
I wasn't quite good enough. But that was my dream."
When he was still a teenager, Shemar Moore was approached about becoming a model,
but he wasn't exactly interested right away. As he revealed to Ebony in 1998,
"At 16, I thought it was for sissies. But at 19,
when tuition was a reality, I was like, okay, well maybe it's not for sissies."
So Moore gave it a try, though he struggled to find his place in the industry, sometimes living
paycheck to paycheck. Furthermore, his looks confused some casting agents. As he recalled,
"They didn't know what I was. I was uni-race. I didn't fit the clothes or
I wasn't pretty enough, wasn't tough enough or Black enough."
Moore also noticed that many of the clothes he was expected to
wear seemed to have been designed for other types of bodies. As he put it,
"I used to say, 'I'm Black. Don't they make clothes for big butts or big thighs?'"
Moore eventually wanted to move into acting, but he found that people still
focused on his good looks rather than his other talents. As he explained to Ebony in 2001,
"With the physical, I can't speak to that. I'm flattered that people find
me attractive. I'd rather have that than to have them throwing darts at my pictures."
In 1994, Shemar Moore joined the cast of the iconic daytime soap
opera The Young and the Restless, as a photographer named Malcolm Winters.
"I didn't know anything about soaps. I knew that-
I knew I wanted to act. It was a dream of mine. It really was."
The newcomer expected that the already established stars on the show might be
difficult to work with, but that wasn't the case at all.
"It was a very good feeling to be accepted and to have- to feel the warmth that I was able to feel."
However, Moore seemed to resent being on a soap opera. He often spoke in interviews about wishing
people would take him seriously as an actor rather than just a sex symbol. As he told Ebony in 2001,
"I was born and raised on Young and Restless,
but I can't be Malcolm forever. I'm trying to branch out."
And so, Moore left the show in 2000, although he would return several times over the years.
During the 90s, Shemar Moore was linked to some of Hollywood's most beautiful women,
as he dated both Toni Braxton and Halle Berry. Those relationships generated plenty of tabloid
interest, but he dodged specifics in interviews. As he told Ebony in 1998,
"[Reporters] are going to take it to where they're going to take it. Dirt is what sells."
And as he revealed to the same magazine in 2001,
"I had the Enquirer standing outside my apartment when I was only two years
into being on a soap opera. What dirt do you possibly think you're going to get from me?"
Though Moore tried to keep his private life private at the time,
he did later open up. As he told BET in 2013,
"I was like the little kid who found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It was a
wild ride with Toni. She would never sing for me, though. That always bothered me."
And as for Berry, Moore claims that it was true love. As he put it,
"She was the first woman to really knock my socks off. I fell hard for Halle."
Between 1999 and 2003, Moore hosted the music variety show Soul Train on BET,
as he invited viewers to join him for "the hippest trip in America." After interviewing guests,
Moore would often join the show's dancers, getting his groove on while
rocking some memorable turn-of-the-century styles. And at the end of each episode,
he would join the crew in wishing viewers "Love, peace, and soul!"
Moore's legacy on the show is clearly well-established, as old clips of him dancing on
Soul Train still regularly go viral online. When the series' original host Don Cornelius passed
away in 2012, Moore spoke with Entertainment Tonight about the show's legacy. As he put it,
"It was truly my honor to continue the tradition and be a part of history… I
didn't dare try to fill his shoes because it just couldn't be done. Don was the man!"
"Me and your Soul Train family, Don, wish you nothing but love, peace, and soul."
Early in his career, Shemar Moore made no secret of the fact that he wanted to use
his modeling and TV fame to make the jump to the big screen. Specifically, he hoped to follow in
the footsteps of Samuel L. Jackson and Denzel Washington. As he marveled to Jet in 2001,
"They bring magic to the screen!"
Moore's highest-profile big screen role came in 2005, when he starred in Diary of
a Mad Black Woman, which was the first in Tyler Perry's Madea film franchise. Moore
played the character of Orlando, who was a bit of a heartthrob, but his appearance in
that movie now gets attention for all the wrong reasons. As Moore put it on Instagram in 2012,
"Good movie.. Sometimes crooked wig."
Moore hoped that the film would introduce him to a whole new world of cinematic acting opportunities,
but that didn't exactly happen. Instead, it was a return to the small screen that awaited him.
The CBS crime procedural Criminal Minds launched in 2005, and despite Shemar Moore's hesitation
about returning to TV, he was an integral part of the cast as FBI Agent Derek Morgan. The character
used his knowledge of criminal psychology to track killers, and he quickly became a fan favorite,
thanks in particular to his swoon-worthy tendency to call people "baby girl."
Moore would stick with the show for more than a decade. Even though he seems to have enjoyed
his time on Criminal Minds, he was honest with Ebony in 2013 when he admitted he stayed for
the money. Ultimately, though, the paycheck wasn't enough to keep him around forever,
as he shocked fans by stepping away from the show during its 11th season. His
departure hadn't been announced beforehand, as he experienced a particularly traumatic
kidnapping in the episode "Derek" and decided to leave the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Moore
spoke with E! News in 2016 about his decision to leave, as he explained,
"I am wanting to see what else is out there for me and what else I'm
capable of in my career and also in my personal life. I'm looking for
balance. I want to fall in love, get married, have kids, travel."
Criminal Minds itself ended a few years later, but the series has since been revived on Paramount+ as
Criminal Minds: Evolution. In 2022, Moore teased a possible return, as he told Entertainment Tonight:
"Would I go back to Criminal Minds and flirt with my baby girl and chase down unsubs? Sure."
"Okay!" "All right."
Back in 2007, the National Enquirer published photos of Shemar Moore on
what the tabloid claimed was a gay nude beach in Hawaii. But Moore denied any speculation
about his sexual orientation, insisting that he'd been accompanied by two women.
Then in 2016, a video went viral online that showed Moore with some
queer fans outside of a nightclub. The actor once again quashed speculation,
first with a post on Instagram. And then later that year he told BET,
"If you're gay, you're gay. I'm not,
and I know that and I'm very comfortable with who I am and I love women."
Two years later, Moore turned heads when he showed up to the Grammys with Quantico star
Annabelle Acosta on his arm. TMZ caught up with him at an airport, and Moore admitted to only
bringing Acosta so that people wouldn't speculate about his sexuality anymore.
In 2017, Shemar Moore took the lead on another CBS procedural. This time,
it was S.W.A.T., on which he plays Sergeant Dan "Hondo" Harrelson,
a role that requires him to be in full-on action hero mode.
"I get to be a lead, which I'm proud of, but I'm also smart enough and humble enough
to know that I can't do it by myself."
S.W.A.T. aired its hundredth episode in April 2022, and Moore is grateful that he's been able
to use his position on the show to address important issues. In 2020, during a time
of widespread protests in the wake of police brutality and the killings of George Floyd and
Breonna Taylor, Moore realized that S.W.A.T. had an opportunity. So he called the show's producers
and told them that they needed to address this issue. As he explained to Digital Spy,
"It's really like watching an action movie on TV. And that's our signature, we're always going to
do that. But all the while we're also going to mix in current topics and prevalent messages."
Shemar Moore turned 50 in April 2020, and as a middle-aged man,
he remains focused on his fitness. Partly that's because of his job,
as he had to bulk up to play the physically imposing Hondo. As he told Men's Health in 2017,
"It's a mandated organizational policy that each SWAT officer start their day with a workout,
which must be at least one-hour minimum. They look like linebackers. So while I am an actor playing
a role, I still wanted to look as authentic as possible, to physically have a presence."
And Moore's not shy about showing off his progress on social media.
In a 2019 Instagram post featuring his money-making abs, he revealed,
"I [...] am getting my 33 year old body BACK.... by busting my whole entire ass [at] the gym,
lifting weights, running, stairs, hiking, cycling, boxing, swimming, massages, dieting, SLEEPING!!!!"
And in an interview with Ability Magazine,
Moore talked about how exercise can happen anywhere, as he said,
"Working out in a gym gets old after [a] while, so you've got to mix it up.
I go and I do the sand dunes, I do the Santa Monica stairs, I ride my bike,
I box [...] I just love the hot weather and I love exercise, so I keep it together."
During a January 2023 appearance on The Jennifer Hudson Show, Shemar Moore
announced that he would soon be adding a new position to his multi-hyphenate resume: father!
"Shemar Moore is about to be a daddy!"
Moore noted that it was always a dream of his mother's for him to have a child, and
his girlfriend, Jesiree Dizon, was coincidentally due to give birth on the three-year anniversary
of his mother's passing in February. Dizon wound up having the baby slightly early,
though, as their daughter Frankie arrived in late January. As moore gushed on Instagram,
"THE LOVE OF MY LIFE!! I'm a Girl Daddy!!!! DREAMS COME TRUE!! Grandma Marilyn is
in heaven puff puff passing, drinking her wine, and doing her happy dance.."
A few weeks later, Moore took baby Frankie to his
mother's grave. He posted a photo on Instagram and wrote in the caption,
"Mom's dream was for me to become a father and give momma some grand
babies... it took me a minute, but momma's dream is now reality!!"