Eric Winter

Info

Full Name: Eric Barrett Winter
Date of birth: July 17, 1976 (50 years old)
Location: La Mirada, California
Country: USA

Eric Winter has been active for 19 years, participating in 4 movies that average a 7.0/10 score.

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Tráiler en VOSE de 'Harry Potter' T1

Biography

Eric Winter spent three straight years shooting a daytime soap. Between 2002 and 2005 he played Rex Brady on 'Days of Our Lives', the American serial that has been running since 1965, and he learned there what everybody learns in that job: how to memorise pages of dialogue overnight and deliver them in two takes the next morning. Half of American television has been through that school.

He was born on 17 July 1976 in La Mirada, a town in the Los Angeles area, and grew up in nearby La Puente. He took a psychology degree at UCLA, and before acting he made a living as a model, with campaigns for Tommy Hilfiger and an appearance in the advert for Britney Spears's Curious fragrance. The step from there to television castings was a short one.

From soap to supporting parts

Once he left the serial he strung together network roles. He was the troublesome boyfriend in 'Brothers & Sisters' (2007), an assistant district attorney in 'Moonlight' (2008) and, above all, agent Craig O'Laughlin in 'The Mentalist' between 2010 and 2012.

That last one deserves its own note. He turned up as the pleasant boyfriend of one of the agents on Simon Baker's team and ended up at the centre of one of the show's most talked about twists, when it emerged that he was working for Red John. Plenty of viewers still know him for that alone.

Then came 23 episodes of 'Witches of East End' (2013) as Dash Gardiner, the rich and dubious brother in Lifetime's witch fantasy, and a run on 'Rosewood' (2016). Neither made it past a second season, which is the usual arithmetic at that level.

In film he stayed in the supporting ranks. He was the insufferable fiancé in 'Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay' (2008), the doctor Katherine Heigl dates while Gerard Butler coaches her through it in 'The Ugly Truth' (2009), and part of the cast of 'Fire with Fire' (2012) alongside Bruce Willis, Rosario Dawson and Josh Duhamel. He also showed up in the romantic drama 'Comet' (2014).

Tim Bradford, the part of his life

In 2018 he joined 'The Rookie' as Tim Bradford, the training officer who treats new recruits like army cadets and slowly drops the armour as the series goes on. He has now spent longer with that character than with any other in nearly thirty years of work, and he has climbed with him: sergeant first, then watch commander at the station where Nathan Fillion's John Nolan works.

The character has softened along the way. The writers have taken him from a sergeant barking orders to a man sitting in a therapist's office, which will have rung a bell for a psychology graduate.

A good part of the show's following comes down to Bradford's relationship with officer Lucy Chen, played by Melissa O'Neil. Winter has compared the pair to Ross and Rachel, and the fandom has spent years pulling apart every scene under the Chenford banner.

Season eight, broadcast between January and May 2026, put him in charge of the watch, sent him back out on the street and closed with a proposal in the final episode, followed minutes later by a kidnapping. He said afterwards that the cast shot an alternative ending in case ABC did not renew.

Puerto Rico, a bilingual household and a rum

His personal life is tied to Puerto Rico. He met the actress Roselyn Sánchez in 2005 and they married on 29 November 2008 at a historic fort in Old San Juan. They have two children, Sebella, born in January 2012, and Dylan, in November 2017.

Several joint projects have come out of that. In 2017 they published 'Sebi and the Land of Cha Cha Cha', a bilingual children's book about a girl based on their daughter who wanders into a world of Latin dance. For years now they have also recorded the podcast 'He Said, Ella Dijo', where they disagree about relationships, work and parenting, which is rather the point of it.

The other venture started with a drink. On his first trip to the island, Roselyn's father poured an eight year old rum for a man who drank vodka and had written rum off as sugary supermarket stuff. Twenty years later, in 2024, he set up Palm Republic with the drinks entrepreneur Brad Parkes, a brand that blends rums from Panama, Jamaica and the US Virgin Islands and which expanded its American distribution in July 2026.

Not a bad tally for someone who started out posing for catalogues and survived three years of daily soap: nearly thirty years of television, a house run in two languages and a rum label that takes up almost as many hours as the police uniform.