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What You Know Law & Order Guest Star Raphael Sbarge From
With more than 180 acting credits to his name, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Law & Order Season 24 guest star Raphael Sbarge before.
With more than 180 acting credits to his name, chances are that recent Law & Order guest star Raphael Sbarge looked familiar to many viewers.
In Season 24, Episode 4 of the legal drama, titled "The Meaning of Life," Sbarge played defense attorney Brian Lee, going head-to-head in the courtroom with Executive Assistant District Attorney Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy).
If you recognized Sbarge when he appeared in the judge's chambers or courtroom, there’s very good reason for that. The New York City native’s lengthy career extends back decades, starting with his very first role as a child on Sesame Street in 1969.
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What else has Raphael Sbarge appeared in?
Sbarge is perhaps best known for his long-running stint on the fairy tale-inspired drama series Once Upon a Time, in which he played the dual role of psychiatrist Dr. Archie Hopper and Jiminy Cricket.
He also appeared as San Francisco homicide inspector David Molk in the Steven Bochco crime drama series Murder in the First, and spent three seasons as Jake Straka on the early 2000s legal drama The Guardian.
Sbarge got his big break in the early 1980s when he landed the role of Glenn in Risky Business, the 1983 comedy film starring Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay.
From there, he proved his versatility as an actor by taking on guest starring roles in some of television’s most popular series, including NYPD Blue, ER, Six Feet Under, 24, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Grey’s Anatomy, Dexter, NCIS, The Blacklist, Chicago Fire, and New Amsterdam, just to name a few.
In one of his latest projects, Sbarge fought against the forces of evil as Pastor Don Revans in the supernatural horror film The Exorcist: Believer, released in 2023 by Universal Pictures.
Has Raphael Sbarge appeared in the Law & Order franchise before?
Sbarge is no stranger to the Law & Order universe and has appeared on Law & Order: LA, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and in the anthology series Law & Order True Crime before he took on the role of attorney Brian Lee in Season 24 of Law & Order.
In "The Meaning of Life" episode, Lee challenged the idea of when life ends after Price tried — and succeeded — to have a man charged with murder even though the brain dead victim remained physically alive on life support. The victim, who was later taken off life support during the trial and officially stopped breathing, was killed by a man targeting fertility doctors.
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Sbarge’s role as the defense attorney is just his latest in a long and successful career that began when he was just a child.
How Raphael Sbarge got his start in acting
Sbarge landed his first role as a child on Sesame Street in 1969, but his mom, who was a costume designer, had no intention of becoming a stage mom in the years that followed and told her son that if he wanted to pursue acting as a child it would have to be his own decision, he told SciFiPulse in a 2023 story.
After his photographer father helped him with headshots, Sbarge recalled getting the name of an agent through a friend and setting up an appointment on his own in Manhattan.
“Then, on my own, I bicycled over to the East Side to meet them. When they met me, they said they would give me a shot and decided to start sending me out,” he recalled.
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He earned his Screen Actors Guild union card shortly after by appearing in a Jell-O commercial, and then landed his first Broadway show at the age of 16, opposite Faye Dunaway.
“I was a very driven kid, who really knew what he wanted,” Sbarge told HuffPost in 2015.
He’s worked consistently ever since in various roles, also taking on directing and producing projects as his career has continued to grow.
“Acting is profoundly difficult, and it’s full of rejection,” Sbarge told SciFiPulse. “But. If you can stay with it — continually look for ways to stay strong and keep your feet under you, you can survive the ups and downs.”
To find out who else may pop up in Season 24, watch Law & Order on Thursdays at 8/7c p.m. on NBC or stream episodes the next day on Peacock.
