David Harris

New York native David Dominic Harris studied at the Manhattan High School of Performing Arts and joined their drama department upon the advice of an English teacher. He made his acting debut in the made-for-television drama Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys (1976). Three years later, he had a leading role in the cult movie The Warriors (1979), achieving lasting fame as the flamboyantly attired Cochise (complete with turquoise necklace and red bandanna), a key member in a New York street gang. Notable among his subsequent film appearances are the Robert Redford-starring prison drama Brubaker (1980), the murder mystery A Soldier's Story (1984) (set in a segregated U.S. Army regiment during World War II) and Quicksilver (1986) (as a character named 'Apache'). He was seen more frequently on the small screen in episodes of Kojak (1973), MacGyver (1985), Hill Street Blues (1981), Simon & Simon (1981) , The Equalizer (1985), and Profiler (1996), among many others. Harris is also well-remembered as the abused Mont Royal house slave Priam, brother of Semiramis, in the epic miniseries North & South: Book 1, North & South (1985); and as the uniformed Officer Donny Simmons in several instalments of NYPD Blue (1993). Harris died from cancer on October 25 2024 in New York.