Biography of Cote de Pablo
Cote de Pablo was born in Santiago, Chile, and grew up in Miami, Florida. She attended Arvida Middle School in Miami before going on to Carnegie Mellon University, where she graduated in 2000 with a degree in music theater. During her time at Carnegie Mellon, she was involved in various theater productions such as “Indiscretions,” “The Fantasticks,” “The House of Bernarda Alba,” “And The World Goes ‘Round,” “A Little Night Music,” and “Cloud Techtonics.” Her first television appearance was as a co-host on the 1994 show Control (2000) with Carlos Ponce, the host of Entertainment Tonight (1981).
In 2001, Cote performed in the Shakespearean play Measure for Measure at the New York City Public Theater.
She then began making television appearances, including a role as Gina in the ABC series The Education of Max Bickford (2001), where she worked with Richard Dreyfuss, Marcia Gay Harden, Regina Taylor, Helen Shaver, and Katee Sackhoff. Her other TV roles included parts in The $treet (2000) and When I Grow Up (1990). In 2004, she starred as Marguerite Cisneros in the short-lived Fox series The Jury (2004).
In 2005, she played Dolores Fuentes in the stage musical The Mambo Kings and was later cast as Mossad officer Ziva David in the popular series NCIS (2003), alongside Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherly, Pauley Perrette, David McCallum, Sean Murray, Lauren Holly, Rocky Carroll, and Brian Dietzen.
By 2008, she had moved to Los Angeles.
Family
Parents: María Olga Fernández and Francisco de Pablo
Siblings: Andrea de Pablo and Francisco de Pablo
Cote lives in LA, while her mother resides in Chile, her sister lives in New York, and her father and brother are in Miami.
Trivia
She performs her own stunts on NCIS (2003) and has sustained injuries while doing so, including a gunshot to the face for the episode Cloak (2008) and a shrapnel injury for Enemies Foreign (2010).
Cote sings a track titled “Temptation” on NCIS: The Official TV Soundtrack, which she performed in the episode Last Man Standing (2008).
Born María José de Pablo, she initially went by Coty before changing it to Cote due to its association with a beauty line. In Chile, María José is often shortened to Cote.
Quotes
On the physical demands of NCIS “Coming from the theater I love the adrenaline rush from working on NCIS. You get home and you’re exhausted, but you feel like you’ve really worked. It’s such a masochistic thing… I remember my knees were all bruised up because I had to fall so many times. That was taxing on the body.”
On faith: “I have friends who ask me, ‘How can you believe in God?’ I respond, ‘How can you not?’ I’ve seen the majestic beauty of nature and its overwhelming perfection. To me, nothing is closer to God than that.”
