Jerome Preston Bates is an American theater, film and television actor, director and playwright.
Oz, All My Children, Law & Order, Third Watch, Lights Out, NYPD Blue, New York Undercover, Shaft 2000, Musical Chairs, It Runs in the Family, The Out-of-Towners, Tio Papi, Peeples, Romeo and Juliet in Harlem.
The entire August Wilson Century Cycle (Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History, Georgia), Oedipus Rex (Times Square Arts Center).
Training: LAMDA (London, UK), HB Studio, University of Tennessee, Knoxville College.
On November 5, 2007, Bates took over the role of Derek Frye on the ABC soap opera, All My Children, the third actor to play that character.