David Caruso stepped out in Sherman Oaks, California, on Monday, a rare public sighting for the 72-year-old actor who once helped define network television in the 2000s. Wearing light gray sweatpants, a gray printed shirt, dark Crocs, a beige fedora and black sunglasses, he kept his red hair long as he ran errands.
The outing lands with extra weight because Caruso has spent years mostly out of Hollywood. He played Lieutenant Horatio Caine on CSI: Miami from 2002 until 2012, then retreated from acting and moved into the art world as an art dealer and gallery owner. That gallery space closed in 2025, adding another quiet turn to a career that once seemed built for prime time and then faded from view.
Caruso’s name still carries the kind of history that comes with a high-profile rise and a very public exit. He left NYPD Blue partway through the second season after winning a Golden Globe for the role, then later told Entertainment Weekly that he had to come back and prove he could do it again. He also told that he had nine years of unemployment after leaving the show, a stretch that underscored how hard it was to turn early television success into lasting momentum.
CSI: Miami became the role most people still associate with him, but the show itself did not end on strength. It was canceled in 2012 because of low ratings and an overblown budget, closing the chapter on a series that had made Caruso a recognizable face around the world. His long red-haired, sunglasses-on screen image as Horatio Caine became the signature look of the franchise, even as his off-screen career remained much more unsettled.
That tension between the polished persona and the messy backstory has followed him for decades. In his 2016 book Truth Is A Total Defense, Steven Bochco wrote that Caruso’s on-set behavior was allegedly volatile. Bochco said Caruso allegedly demanded $100,000 per episode, a 38-foot trailer, additional security and two hotel suites in NYC, and described him as emotionally unavailable, moody and sullen. He also wrote that Caruso felt he was too good for television and wanted to be a movie star.
Caruso has not presented himself as a man untouched by those early choices. He told The Hollywood Reporter, “Young actors sometimes do very dumb things. I was no exception,” a line that reads less like damage control than a blunt inventory of a career that veered in more than one direction. The years since have only sharpened that picture: a breakout on NYPD Blue, a bigger run on CSI: Miami, then a hard step away from acting and into a quieter business life that ended when the gallery closed in 2025.
For now, the Monday errand run is what the public gets: a 72-year-old Caruso in casual clothes, moving through Sherman Oaks with the same unmistakable look that once made him a television star. The question is not whether he vanished from the spotlight. He did. The question is how long a figure so closely tied to one of TV’s most recognizable detectives can stay gone before a simple street sighting turns into a fresh reminder of the fame he left behind.
