"When we decided to pair Jerry (Orbach) with a new detective, Ben was the only person on the list," says executive director Dick Wolf. "I can’t imagine anyone looking at this guy and not wanting to cast him as a leading man. He’s a very quiet sex symbol. His acting ability is manifest in the persona he plays. In reality, Ben’s about as far from a cop as you can get attitudinally, but he is very believable as Rey."
Bratt’s character, Reynaldo Curtis, is a composite of contrasts. He’s ethnic yet mainstream, tough yet sensitive. A cocky newcomer, he exhibits a great deal of grace under pressure–except when he loses his temper. On a break from filming a Manhattan street scene, Bratt describes his character: "Rey is a true believer in right and wrong and good and evil, and that’s the
place from which he operates. Rey is an extremely dedicated, highly principled, moral individual who, at times, can be up on his soapbox a little too long. If he has a flaw, it’s that he’s a little too self-righteous."
He can also overreact. "That element of danger, that bit of mystery in not knowing when his temper is going to flare, is nice," agrees Bratt. "And it makes for good drama. Because you have the grizzled veteran, Lennie Briscoe, the detective who’s seen it all, who can put Rey in check, rein him in."
Curtis has gone through a few noticeable changes—not to mention hairstyles—since last season. He has been shown to be only human: The churchgoing father of three recently separated from his wife after admitting he had been unfaithful. In the upcoming three-part Los Angeles story, Curtis faces another temptation—a flirtatious young Hollywood executive who talks the talk, walks the walk, and books the hotel rooms. This is a woman who has obviously never read The Rules.
Bratt revels in Curtis’s emotional turmoil. "It’s given me a chance to do something more than straight exposition and asking questions," he says. "There are only so many ways you can be creative with ‘What color was the car?’"
It’s tempting to compare Bratt with another Latino heartthrob, NYPD Blue’s Jimmy Smits. But Bratt is not, strictly speaking, Latino. Like everything else about him, his ethnic background is an interesting melange. "My mother is Peruvian Indian, from Lima, and my father is German-English," says Bratt, one of five siblings. "One of the things that I was excited about was the opportunity to portray a character you almost never see on network television but that exists in the millions in this country, and that’s a bicultural person. I wanted to play someone that finally was reflective of myself, someone of diverse ethnic background."
Bratt’s parents divorced when he was 4. As a teenager, he went to live with his father, a steelworker, in San Francisco. "I had a need to know who my father was, what my second half was," he says. (Seven years ago, Bratt’s father decided to cut off contact with his children, a source of great pain to Bratt, who declines to discuss the situation further.) It was his father who suggested that he try out for a high-school play during his senior year. Bratt went for his first audition and came out with one of the lead roles in a musical version of "Destry Rides Again" and the knowledge that he wanted to become an actor. He studied acting at the University of California at Santa Barbara before going on to San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater.
His TV career began in 1987, when he was cast as the lead in a series called Juarez, about a young Mexican-American detective in El Paso, Texas. It aired only as a TV-movie. "I was glad for that. I was so green. I didn’t know what I was doing," Bratt says. Next came six episodes of Knightwatch, in which he played the leader of a Guardian-Angels-type group. In 1990, Wolf cast him in the short-lived Nasty Boys, a show Bratt describes as "young macho cops dressed in black ninja uniforms who went on drug raids."
When that series died, Bratt, who was living in Los Angeles, turned to film, quickly getting a handful of small parts. His first role was as John Travolta’s nemesis in a little-seen film called "Chains of Gold." I played a 21-year-old drug czar worth $25 million with a Latin accent—very campy," he says. His other film credits include well-received turns in "The River Wild," "Bound by Honor," and "Clear and Present Danger."
Bratt had no plans to return to TV, even though Wolf would call with the occasional offer. Bratt politely but persistently refused until Wolf asked him to costar in Law & Order. "I thought about 10 seconds and said yes," says Bratt, who has kept his film career going with the recently released "Follow Me Home," the story of a group of artists who want to paint a mural about ethnic roots on the White House.
Seated in the airy New York City loft he shared until recently with his girlfriend of six year, documentary filmmaker Monika McClure, Bratt comes across as a Zen version of Curtis, the cool cop with attitude. The loft, decorated in soothing blues and greens, is filled with flowers, and a small Japanese fountain gurgles hypnotically in the background.
"This is a time for me to be alone and to focus on being comfortable with living by myself," he says. "All of my adult life I’ve been in long-term relationships. But this is still so painful. It’s truly like a divorce. The one positive is that it’s allowed me to focus on my work. So may young actors get caught up in being the cool renegade. I find it refreshing to play someone that is a good person. It may sound corny, but I think that all of us in the world have a responsibility to make this place peaceful, to give each other a hand."
Curtis couldn’t have said it better.