Forest Whitaker

Forest Steven Whitaker (born July 15, 1961) is an American actor, producer and director.

He is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a British Academy Film Award, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Forest Steven Whitaker was born on July 15, 1961, in Longview, Texas, the son of Laura Francis (née Smith), a special education teacher and Forest E. Whitaker Jr., an insurance salesman.

A DNA test has shown that his mother had Akan ancestry, while his father was of Igbo descent.

When Whitaker was in elementary school, his family moved to Carson, California.

He has two younger brothers and an older sister.

His first role as an actor was the lead in Dylan Thomas's play Under Milk Wood.

Whitaker attended Palisades Charter High School, where he played on the football team and sang in the choir, graduating in 1979.

He entered California State Polytechnic University, Pomona on a football scholarship, but a back injury made him change his major to music (singing).

He toured England with the Cal Poly Chamber Singers in 1980.

While still at Cal Poly, he briefly changed his major to drama.

He later transferred to the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California to study opera as a tenor and was subsequently accepted into the university's Drama Conservatory.

After completing several films in the early 1980s, Whitaker gained additional roles in multiple television shows.

After making his film debut in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Whitaker went on to earn a reputation for intensive character study work for films, such as Platoon (1986), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Bird (1988), The Crying Game (1992), Phenomenon (1996), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), The Great Debaters (2007), The Butler (2013), Arrival (2016), and Respect (2021).

He graduated from USC with a BFA in acting in 1982.

He then took a course at Drama Studio London at its now defunct California branch.

In his first onscreen performance of note, he had a supporting role playing a high school football player in the 1982 film version of Cameron Crowe's coming-of-age teen-retrospective Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

On the series Diff'rent Strokes, he played a bully in the 1985 episode "Bully for Arnold".

That same year, Whitaker also played the part of a comic book salesman in the Amazing Stories episode "Gather Ye Acorns".

He appeared in the first and second parts of North and South in 1985 and 1986.

In 1986, he appeared in Martin Scorsese's sports drama The Color of Money and Oliver Stone's Vietnam War drama film Platoon.

The following year, he co-starred in the comedy Good Morning, Vietnam alongside Robin Williams.

In 1988, Whitaker appeared in the film Bloodsport and had his first lead role starring as jazz alto saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker in Clint Eastwood's Bird.

To prepare himself for the part, Whitaker took saxophone lessons and sequestered himself in a loft with only a bed, couch, and an alto saxophone, having also conducted extensive research and talked to numerous people who knew Parker.

His performance, which has been called "transcendent", earned him the Best Actor award at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Globe nomination.

Throughout the 1990s, Whitaker mainly had roles in television films which aired on HBO, including Criminal Justice, The Enemy Within, and Witness Protection.

Whitaker continued to work with a number of well-known directors throughout the 1990s.

He starred in the 1990 film Downtown and was cast in the pivotal role of Jody, a captive British soldier in the 1992 film The Crying Game, for which he used an English accent.

Todd McCarthy of Variety described Whitaker's performance as "big-hearted", "hugely emotional", and "simply terrific".

Whitaker made his directorial debut with the television film Strapped (1993), and directed the films Waiting to Exhale (1995), Hope Floats (1998), and First Daughter (2004).

He was a member of the cast that won the first ever National Board of Review Award for Best Acting by an Ensemble for Robert Altman's film, Prêt-à-Porter, in 1994.

In 1995, he gave a "characteristically emotional performance" in Wayne Wang and Paul Auster's Smoke, and appeared in the science-fiction film Species.

He has also appeared in Panic Room (2002), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) as Saw Gerrera, and Black Panther (2018) as Zuri.

He was pursuing a degree in "The Core of Conflict: Studies in Peace and Reconciliation" at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2004.

Whitaker has a long history of working with well-regarded film directors and actors.

Whitaker won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the historical drama The Last King of Scotland (2006).

In 2011, he was inducted as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, later receiving a promotion to Special Envoy for Peace and Reconciliation, and serves as the CEO of Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative (WPDI), a non-profit outreach program.

He made his Broadway debut in the revival of Eugene O'Neill's Hughie (2016).

Apart from his acting career, Whitaker is also known for his humanitarian work and activism.

Since 2019, he has starred as Bumpy Johnson in the Epix crime drama series Godfather of Harlem.