Hill" Harper, an American actor, and playwright, was born on May 17, 1966. His credits include CSI: NY, Limitless, and The Good Doctor. Harper was born in Iowa City, Iowa, to psychiatrist Harry D. Harper II and Marilyn Harper Hill, who co-authored the book Wearing Purple and was one of the first black anesthesiologists in the United States. He was given the name "Hill" as a tribute to both his maternal and paternal ancestry when he was born Francis Eugene Harper. Harper's first television role was on the Fox sitcom Married... with Children in 1993, and he also made his cinema debut in the short film Confessions of a Dog in 1994. Spike Lee's Get on the Bus (1996) gave him his first acting part in a feature film, in which he played a UCLA film student boarding a bus to the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. He went on to show his range in films like Christopher Scott Cherot's Hav Plenty (1997) and Spike Lee's He Got Game (1998), in which he played an egotistical pop-soul singer in the former.