• April 10, 2000
• Vol. 53
• No. 14

Police Vitality

In Need of a Beefcake Boost, NYPD Blue Puts Out An APB and Comes Up with Newcomer Henry Simmons

As a 6-year-old kid growing up in Stamford, Conn., Henry Simmons loved to play out scenes from the police drama S.W.A.T. One afternoon when his twin sister, Heather, whom he was chasing, locked him out of the house, he did what any good cop would do: He smashed through a glass door. "I was deep, deep in character," explains Simmons, who ended up with eight stitches in his leg. "But my dad scolded the character right out of me."

Well, not entirely. As Det. Baldwin Jones, the newest addition to the Emmy-winning cast of NYPD Blue, Simmons, 29, gets to play cop all he wants while spiking the show's swoon factor with his six-pack abs and 6'4" frame. "He's really mischievous," says Gordon Clapp, whose Det. Greg Medavoy partners Jones. "We'll be in makeup, and he'll say, 'Oh, man, I don't envy you. All those pages, that scene that just came down between you and Sipowicz. They're shooting it right after this.' He's done this to me about four times, so now I don't believe anything he says."

The son of Henry Sr., 68, a retired IRS officer, and Aurelia, 67, a retired teacher, Simmons performed in plays and studied business on a basketball scholarship at New Hampshire's Franklin Pierce College. He took a finance job after graduating in 1992 but quit when he realized "the business world didn't fit me at all." A role on Another World followed, and last June, Simmons moved to L.A. in a U-Haul, snagging the NYPD part four months later.

He was also quick to find a one-bedroom apartment and a civilian (read nonacting) girlfriend. The good life now also includes his own setside trailer. "I say I'm thirsty," he boasts, throwing open the trailer's refrigerator door to reveal 30 bottles of water, "and this is what I get! Amazing."