Don Harvey

Don Harvey was born in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, just twelve miles from the center of Downtown Detroit, the sixth of eight children. His father worked as an advertising executive for the Auto Industry and his mother was an elementary school teacher. He started playing the drums at age four and picked up the guitar at six. He played in the Jazz Band at Lake Shore High School and won the Louis Armstrong award for the best soloist of the year, as a guitarist. He started acting in school plays and musicals but gave that up when he attended the University of Michigan, because he thought the talent there would be way beyond his level. In his junior year, he was playing guitar in the orchestra pit for a musical, when one his classmates, Gregory Jbara, told him he should get up on stage and start acting again. That summer, he attended the Summer Training Congress at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. While in his senior year at Michigan, he auditioned for the prestigious