Born and raised in Bronx and spent most of his formative years hanging out in New York City, Kirk Acevedo, who is of Puerto Rican/Chinese descent, received his BFA from SUNY Purchase and founded a theater company called The Rorschach Group. After guest-starring on several television shows like New York Undercover (1994) and New York - Police judiciaire (1990), he landed his best-known role as Alvarez, a morose and violent prisoner struggling for redemption on HBO's notoriously gritty Oz (1997). Though he was nominated for a Cable Ace award and an ALMA award for his work on Oz (1997), it was Acevedo's role as Pvt. Tella in La ligne rouge (1998) that won him an ALMA.
