Before becoming a screen tough, the then 19-year-old Davi began his entertainment career on a gentler track--as an opera singer with the Lyric Opera Company in Long Island, NY. After his vocal cords were strained, reportedly a by-product of improper training, Davi committed himself to acting. He gave over 400 performances in college and amateur productions. Moving to NYC after college, Davi studied acting under Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg. His first TV assignment was playing a Greek underworld figure in "Contract on Cherry Street" (NBC, 1977), a superior made-for-TV detective vehicle for Frank Sinatra. Frequent small TV roles followed, usually as crooks or cops, notably as a mob boss late in the run of the acclaimed CBS crime series "Wiseguy".

A breakthrough of sorts came with Davi's lead role in "Terrorist on Trial: The United States vs. Salim Ajami" (CBS, 1988). His intense portrayal of an accused PLO terrorist in a fictional trial caught the eye of Bond producer Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli who gave Davi his first showy feature role. Prior to that, action audiences saw him as a cocky FBI agent out of his depth in "Die Hard" (1988). After jousting with Bond, Davi worked regularly in films but generally in less high-profile genre fare, still alternating between cops and robbers. He has two notorious bombs on his resume, the utterly risible "Christopher Columbus: The Discovery" (1992) and the instant camp classic "Showgirls" (1995). The latter found him playing a sleazy and vaguely menacing club owner. Davi subsequently returned to TV, this time as a series lead, playing a sympathetic, avuncular FBI agent in the crime drama "Profiler" (NBC, 1996-2000).