Jimmy Smits Hosts 'A Capitol Fourth' On PBS; Reba McEntire Set To Perform July 4

Jimmy Smits is set to host 'A Capitol Fourth' for PBS on July 4 at 8pm. This year will be the 30th Anniversary of the special 4th of July celebration. The show will include a concert and fireworks.

Performing in the concert will be Reba McEntire, Lang Lang, Darius Rucker, and John Schneider. Also during the evening McEntire will recieve the National Artistic Achievement Award recognizing her "dedication to enriching the national legacy of the performing arts as well as her lifetime of musical contributions."

Jimmy Smits' theatre credits include the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Anna in The Tropics by Nilo Cruz at the Royale Theatre in 2003; the New York Shakespeare Festival's Shakespeare in the Park production of Much Ado About Nothing in the summer of 2004, as well as Twelfth Night in the summer of '02. Also for The Public Theater, he has appeared in Hamlet, directed by Joseph Papp, and Michael Weller's The Ballad of Soapy Smith, directed by Robert Egan.

Other off-Broadway appearances include Ariano, directed by George C. Wolfe; the American Place/Playwrights Horizon co-production of Buck, by Ronald Ribman; and for the Woman's Project at The American Place Theatre, he appeared opposite Linda Hunt in Little Victories. He appeared in many staged readings and workshop productions at New Dramatists, INTAR and The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre. Regionally, he has been guest artist at The Colorado Shakespeare Festival's production of Othello. He appeared at the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, New York, in productions of Loose Ends, The Rainmaker and Gemini; at the Center Stage, Baltimore, in Eric Overmyer's Native Speech; and in the West Coast premiere of Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden, directed by Robert Egan at the Mark Taper Forum.

Mr. Smits is a graduate of Brooklyn College's Center for the Performing Arts, CUNY and holds an MFA from Cornell University's Theatre Arts Program. Smits' can be seen in the upcoming independent films Mother and Child, opposite Annette Bening and directed by Rodrigo Garcia, and Backyard, directed by Carlos Carrera, which is Mexico's official Oscar submission for Foreign Film. His recent film work includes Robin Swicord's The Jane Austen Book Club, Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. His performance in My Family, Mi Familia earned him an IFP Spirit Award nomination. Other film credits include Price of Glory, Running Scared, The Believers, Old Gringo, Vital Signs, and Switch. Smits television credits include the four-part PBS documentary series Latin Music USA, which he narrates and an Emmy-nominated guest starring role in Season 3 of Showtime's Dexter, preceded by his portrayal of Presidential candidate Matt Santos in The West Wing. He received six consecutive Emmy nominations for his portrayal of Victor Sifuentes on L.A. Law, winning the Emmy in 1990, and five Emmy nominations for his role as Bobby Simone on NYPD Blue, for which he received a Golden Globe award, two additional nominations and four SAG Award nominations. Other television credits include the Showtime movies Solomon and Sheba and Marshall Law, the ABC miniseries Steven King's The Tommyknockers, the award-winning ABC movie The Broken Cord, Glitz, Dangerous Affection and The Cisco Kid for TNT.

For a complete list of the nights' events Click Here.

For more information visit www.pbs.org.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.