Early life

Kodjoe was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Ursula, a German psychologist of partially Jewish descent, and Eric Kodjoe, a Ghanaian physician who is of the Nzema people. His namesake is the Russian poet and writer Boris Pasternak. Kodjoe's matrilineal great-grandmother was Jewish and died in the Holocaust; his maternal grandmother survived the war in hiding. Kodjoe's parents divorced when he was six years old. He grew up in the vicinity of Freiburg im Breisgau. Kodjoe is fluent in German, English, and French, and speaks some Spanish. He has a brother named Patrick and two sisters named Nadja and Lara.

Career

Kodjoe attended Virginia Commonwealth University on a tennis scholarship, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in marketing in 1996. A four-year letterman on the Rams' men's tennis team, he is currently ninth in school history with 75 career singles wins. Tied for third in doubles victories with 66, he was paired with Jonas Elmblad on 37 of them, also third all-time. His brother Patrick Kodjoe played for VCU's basketball team. A back injury ended Boris' tennis aspirations, but he was quickly signed as a model and soon after entered acting. In 1995, he was featured in TLC's music video for "Red Light Special."

Named one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" by People magazine in 2002, Kodjoe is perhaps best known as one of the seven regular cast members from the Showtime drama Soul Food, which aired from 2000 to 2004. He appeared in the 2002 film Brown Sugar and starred in the short-lived sitcom Second Time Around with his Soul Food co-star Nicole Ari Parker, whom he eventually married. He played the role of David Taylor, the wayward son of Pastor Fred Taylor, in the October 2005 film The Gospel. He performed in a play called Whatever She Wants, starring Vivica A. Fox, and made an appearance on the fifth season of Nip/Tuck. His most recent role was in the 2009 science fiction film Surrogates. On December 16, 2009, it was announced that Kodjoe had been cast as the male lead, Steven Bloom, in the new J. J. Abrams television series Undercovers; the show premiered in September and was subsequently cancelled in November 2010 on NBC. Also that year, he appeared as Luther in the film Resident Evil: Afterlife. He appeared on Franklin & Bash in 2012.

In 2013, Kodjoe began starring in the BET comedy parody series Real Husbands of Hollywood. In 2014 he was cast as regular on the ABC primetime soap opera Members Only created by Susannah Grant. In 2015, Kodjoe began a recurring guest-star role in Fox's The Last Man on Earth television series.

Personal life

Kodjoe married his Soul Food: The Series co-star Nicole Ari Parker on May 21, 2005 in Gundelfingen, Germany. She gave birth to their first child, a girl, Sophie Tei-Naaki Lee Kodjoe, on March 5, 2005. Sophie has spina bifida, which was diagnosed at birth. Parker gave birth to the couple's second child, a boy, Nicolas Neruda Kodjoe, on October 31, 2006. Kodjoe and his wife are members of Cascade United Methodist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. The family resides in Los Angeles, California.

Filmography

Film

Television