Eriq La Salle
American actor
Erik Ki La Salle (born July 23, 1962), professionally known as Eriq La Salle, is an American actor, director, writer and producer. La Salle is known for his performance as Dr. Peter Benton in the NBC medical drama ER (1994–2002; 2009) which earned him three NAACP Image Awards and nominations for a Golden Globe Award and three Primetime Emmy Awards.
Early life
La Salle, one of four children, was born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, by his mother, Ada Haynes. He is an alumnus of Weaver High School and the Artists Collective, Inc. in Hartford. He attended the Juilliard School's Drama Division for two years as a member of Group 13 (1980–1984), then attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Graduate Acting Program in 1984.
Career
At the time of his graduation from NYU, La Salle was cast in Joseph Papp's Shakespeare in the Park production of Henry V. Soon after, he found continuous acting work on Broadway, off-Broadway, and on several daytime TV dramas including One Life to Live, where he played the reporter Mike Rivers.
In 1988, La Salle co-starred as Darryl Jenks in the Eddie Murphy movie Coming to America.
In 1994, the medical drama ER premiered on NBC with La Salle starring as Dr.
The public source identifies “Eriq La Salle” as american actor. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Eriq, Salle and American.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q532944. VIAF identifies the subject as 71020541. The Library of Congress control number is no99013307. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1962, 1994, 2002 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Eriq La Salle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.