Memorial Service Set For ‘Heroes’ Dad

Actor Jimmy Jean Louis as Toussaint Louverture

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Tues. April 15, 2014: The dad of beloved NBC ‘Heroes’ actor, Jimmy Jean-Louis, will be remembered at a memorial service in Haiti tomorrow, Wednesday, April 16th.

The Haitian-born actor flew to Haiti last week after his dad, Lephène Jean-Louis, 78, passed away at a Haitian hospital from complications suffered from a single bullet to the abdomen that was inflicted by robbers.

Lephène Jean-Louis was an innocent bystander during an attempted robbery at a local store near his home in Torcelle, Haiti when he was shot once by three assailants who escaped by motorcycle. They are still at large.

The Jean-Louis family has asked for privacy and prayers.

Jimmy Jean-Louis led a simple life in Pétionville, Haiti until the age of twelve, when he moved to Paris. He went on to work in musical theatre in Spain, spending three years with a musical theater “La Belle Epoque” and as a successful international model.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1998 and immediately started honing his chosen craft by lending his abilities to underground and independent films. That eventually led to him landing a role in Jean Claude Van Damme’s “Derailed,” which set the stage for subsequent roles with other Hollywood A-listers. Jean-Louis  went on to shoot “Tears of the sun” with Bruce Willis and Monica Belluci, “Hollywood Homicide” with Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnet, “Monster-In-Law” with Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez and “The Miracle Match” with Patrick Stewart, Wes Bentley and Gerard Butler. He played the lead role in “The Diary of A Tired Black Man” and in “Phat Girlz,” starring opposite Oscar winner Monique Imes Jackson as her love interest. He also portrayed the charismatic Rene, “the Haitian,” in the hit TV show “Heroes.”

Jean-Louis has received a best actor nomination in the movie “Sinking Sand” at the AMAA 2011, the equivalent of the African Oscars and for ‘Toussaint,’ a two-part television series that averaged 3 million viewers when it aired in February on the French network France 2 in 2012.