Chicago PD
Season 2 e.tv (*194) 20:30 Action
Detective Jay Halstead is the brash and trigger-happy detective in Chicago PD’s (2014-current) Intelligence Unit. But it’s not just the attitude that actor Jesse Lee Soffer had to get to terms with. He went from food-conscious former athlete who focused on fitness to a “muscled gym junkie who lives off steak and potatoes,” laughs Jesse.
1 The 33-year-old New Yorker has been acting since he was six, when he was cast in a cereal commercial. His first screen role came two years later when he worked with John Goodman in period comedy Matinee (1993).
2 He is an only biological child but Jesse has three step-sisters and a step-brother following his parents’ – animator Stan and humanitarian Jill’s – divorce.
3 Jesse was a top soccer player in high school and played as a winger, so “I needed to be small and light,” he says. “When I was cast in PD, I had to change everything to bulk up in gym.”
4 He actually made his first Chicago appearance in Chicago Fire (2013current), the original show in the franchise – Chicago PD was tested on Fire before being greenlit as a full show.
5 While he maintains that he’s still 5 on the market, Jesse’s been spotted holding hands and looking cosy with his Chicago PD co-star Sophia Bush (Erin Lindsay) since 2014.
6 And he may love his new action home, but Jesse admits that his heart belongs to soapies and comedy. He played Will Munson in long-running soap As The World Turns (1956-2010) from 2004 to 2010, which he received multiple Emmy nominations for, as well as Bobby Brady in the Brady Bunch movies (1995 and 1996).