Don Harvey was born in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, just twelve miles from the center of Downtown Detroit, the sixth of eight children to an advertising executive father and an elementary school teacher mother.
He started playing the drums at age four and picked up the guitar at six, going on to play in the Jazz Band at Lake Shore High School, where he won the Louis Armstrong award for the best soloist of the year as a guitarist.
Harvey started acting in school plays and musicals, but gave it up when he attended the University of Michigan, where he thought the talent would be beyond his level. However, his classmate Gregory Jbara encouraged him to get back into acting, and he attended the Summer Training Congress at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.
During his senior year at Michigan, Harvey auditioned for the prestigious Yale School of Drama and was accepted as one of fifteen acting students out of thousands of applicants, where he studied alongside notable alumni such as Chris Noth, Patricia Clarkson, and John Turturro.
After graduating, he moved to New York and was hired to replace Aiden Quinn in the original production of Sam Shepard's epic drama "A Lie Of The Mind" at the Promenade Theatre on Broadway, directed by Mr. Shepard and starring Harvey Keitel, Geraldine Page, and Amanda Plummer.
Harvey went on to appear in a string of classic films, including "The Untouchables," "Eight Men Out," "Casualties of War," and "The Thin Red Line," working with notable directors such as Brian DePalma, John Sayles, and Terrence Malick.
He continued to pursue his passion for theatre, playing the title role in Aphra Behn's Restoration Comedy "The Rover" at The Guthrie Theatre, opposite Elizabeth Marvel and Viola Davis, and appearing in productions of Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming," Sam Shepard's "True West," and David Mamet's "American Buffalo."
Most recently, he has appeared in several television shows, including HBO's "Luck," "The Night Of," and "The Deuce," as well as "The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair," "The Last Tycoon," "Better Call Saul," "Yellowstone," "Pam & Tommy," and the upcoming HBO Limited Series "We Own This City."
Harvey was honored with a Daytime Emmy Award nomination in 2017 for his portrayal of Tom Baker on General Hospital and currently lives in Santa Monica with his wife Dyanne, their four-year-old daughter Ashley, and plays bass and sings in a band called "The Don."
