Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito was born in Copenhagen to Elizabeth Foster, an African-American opera and nightclub singer from Alabama, and Giovanni Esposito, an Italian stagehand and carpenter from Naples. After spending his first seven years in Denmark, his family moved to Manhattan. 

As an actor, Giancarlo Esposito has played a wide range of roles, although he’s best known for playing people on the fringes of society such as notorious drug dealer Gustavo “Gus” Fring in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Esposito won Best Supporting Actor in a Drama at the 2012 Critics' Choice Television Awards for that role.