Pruitt Taylor Vince

Pruitt Taylor Vince (born July 5, 1960) is an American character actor. He had roles in the films Mississippi Burning (1988), Jacob’s Ladder (1990), JFK (1991), Identity (2003), and Constantine (2005). He played J.J. Laroche in The Mentalist (2008–2015).

Vince has also appeared on many television series. In 1997, he won a Primetime Emmy Award for his guest role as Clifford Banks in the second season of the television series Murder One.

Vince was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 5, 1960. He attended Louisiana State University.

For most of his life, Vince has had a condition called nystagmus, the involuntary movement of the eye.

Vince made his film debut in Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law, but his scenes were edited out. He had prominent supporting roles in several major films, including a turn as a dimwitted Ku Klux Klan member in Mississippi Burning (1988), Lee Bowers in JFK (1991), and the main character’s best friend in Nobody’s Fool (1994). His first lead role was in James Mangold’s independent film Heavy (1995), playing a sweet, silent, overweight cook harbouring a crush on a waitress played by Liv Tyler. He starred in Giuseppe Tornatore’s film The Legend of 1900 (1998).

Vince often alternates between heroic and villainous characters. Vince played a Southern policeman in the neo-noir psychological horror film Angel Heart (1987), a kidnapper’s assistant in the crime thriller film Trapped (2002), and a deputy prison warden in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994). He played a lovable, small-town pub owner in Beautiful Girls (1996); a mentally ill serial killer in the 2003 mystery thriller film Identity (a second collaboration with director Mangold); a pompous sheriff in Nurse Betty (2000); a gossip columnist in Simone (2002); and a dissolute Roman Catholic priest with psychic abilities in the 2005 supernatural horror film Constantine. He can also be seen in the dramatic film Love from Ground Zero (1998), playing as Walter. Other film titles include the psychological horror film Jacob’s Ladder (1990), the neo-noir film China Moon (1994), the action thriller film Homefront (2013), and the supernatural horror film The Devil’s Candy (2015).

Guest appearances on TV shows include Deadwood, Alias, The X-Files, Miami Vice, Quantum Leap, Chicago Hope, In the Heat of the Night, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Highlander: The Series, and the American remake of Touching Evil. In 2011, he appeared as Otis in the AMC television series The Walking Dead. He also had a guest role playing a 600-lb. patient in Fox’s medical drama House. From 2010 to 2014, he had a multi-episode appearance in The Mentalist. In 2012, he appeared in a full episode of Justified. He took a comic role as “Jelly” in Flypaper. In 2018, he appeared on an episode of The Blacklist as Lawrence Devlin.

Vince received an Emmy Award in 1997 for Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his role as serial killer Clifford Banks during the second season of the television series Murder One.