Michael Steger

Michael Mateus Steger was born in Los Angeles to an accountant mother and an operations manager father. The third of four sons in his family, the actor was of Ecuadorian, Austrian and Norwegian descent. While his brothers dabbled in art and a little bit of commercial acting, Steger was the only one who pursued entertainment as a lifelong career. The young man grew up watching Bruce Lee movies and hoped to follow in the film icon's footsteps. He graduated with a BA in theater and a minor in Spanish from Cal Poly Pomona before starting his Hollywood career. After appearing in several TV and print advertisements, he guest starred on the children's action/adventure show, "V.R. Troopers" (Fox Kids, 1994-96) before taking a few years off from acting. He came back in 2005 with a small part in the independent release "3 Girls and the Golden Cocoon," filmed in India. That same year, the California native appeared as Sniper on the Emmy-nominated series "NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Services" (CBS, 2003-). Liking the young man's look, visionary filmmaker Tim Burton cast Steger in The Killers' video for their song "Bones" in 2006. His hard work in minor roles soon lead Steger to more steady work on television, starting with a recurring role as Miguel on "The Winner" (Fox, 2006). Showing his acting versatility, he also guest-starred on several Disney Channel series including its biggest hit, "Hannah Montana" (2006-11) and the less than stellar "Cory in the House" (2007), a spin-off of the mouse network's longest-running show, "That's So Raven" (2003-07). Disney could seemingly not get enough of Steger, giving him a role as Vikram in the network's original movie "The Cheetah Girls: One World" (2008), where Steger made a return trip to India to film the movie. Getting the Indian accent down came easily for the actor, who had a hobby of listening to tapes of different accents at home.Thankfully, Steger did not have to utilize any foreign accents when he joined the cast of "90210," a show based on hit 1990s teen drama, "Beverly Hills, 90210" (Fox, 1990-2000). He played Beverly Hills teen Navid Shirazi, the son of an adult film director and best friend to Dixon Wilson (Tristan Wilds), who also produces the fictional school's Blaze News and is reported to be a Scientologist. While continuing to star on "90210," Steger was a guest star on the season four opener of "Criminal Minds" (CBS, 2005-) and landed a season three episode of "True Blood" (HBO, 2008-14), before playing a foreign exchange student whose sister (Lana Parrilla) has become romantically involved with a ruthless spy in a season one episode of "Covert Affairs" (USA Network, 2010-14).