With his successful run playing a brash attorney on the popular Stephen Bochco legal drama “L.A. Law” (NBC, 1986-1994), actor Blair Underwood carved out a niche for himself portraying highly educated authority figures on scores of television series and in feature films. Underwood did all this by managing to avoid negative typecasting of African-American men often seen in Hollywood; earning NAACP Image awards for offering audiences multi-faceted lawyers, doctors and executives in films like “Set it Off” (1996) and “Deep Impact” (1998), and on series ranging from “Sex and the City” (HBO,
