Debbie Allen cast him as Shazza Zulu on A Different World, based on a tape of him in an avant-garde play.

onstage at the Live 8 concert in Barrie, Ontario, and sang alongside Macy Gray at the 2005 Emmy Awards.

[4] In 2007, he played the character Cameron, the boyfriend of Rowena Price (Halle Berry), in the film Perfect Stranger.

The Season 9 premiere revealed Dourdan's character dying in the arms of his colleague and friend Gil Grissom.

[7] Dourdan has African-American, Native American, Franco-Haitian (Haiti), Jewish, Irish, and Scottish ancestry.

[8] He has two children: a son, Lyric, with Cynthia Hadden, and a daughter, Nyla, with Jennifer Sutton, whom Dourdan dated from 1995 to 2000.

[10] Despite rumors, the drug charges had nothing to do with his departure from CSI, as the contract negotiations had already concluded and he had finished filming the last of his scenes before the incident.

In July 2011, after crashing his car, Dourdan was arrested but charges were dropped for drug possession (oxycontin).