Laurence Fishburne

Laurence John Fishburne III (born July 30, 1961, usually credited as Larry Fishburne until 1993) is an American actor.

He is a three time Emmy Award and Tony Award winning actor known for his roles on stage and screen.

He has been hailed for his forceful, militant, and authoritative characters in his films.

In 1972, at the age of 11, Fishburne received positive reviews for his first acting role in the initial ABC Theater teleplay If You Give a Dance You Gotta Pay the Band.

Soon after, Fishburne portrayed Joshua Hall on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live.

His most memorable childhood role was in Cornbread, Earl and Me, in which he played a young boy who witnessed the police shooting of a popular high school basketball star.

When production began in March 1976, he was just 14 years old, having lied about his age to get the part.

Filming took so long that he actually was 17 years old upon its completion.

Fishburne is a graduate of Lincoln Square Academy in New York, which closed in the 1980s.

For most of his early career, he was credited as Larry Fishburne.

Fishburne spent much of the 1980s in and out of television and periodically on stage.

In the early 1980s, he worked as a bouncer at punk rock clubs, such as Cathay de Grande.

He appeared in the early 1980s movies Band of the Hand, Death Wish 2 and The Cotton Club, and had a minor role in the critically acclaimed Steven Spielberg film The Color Purple.

Fishburne had a recurring role as Cowboy Curtis on Paul Reubens' CBS children's television series Pee-wee's Playhouse.

He also appeared in the M*A*S*H episode, "The Tooth Shall Set You Free".

In Spenser: For Hire, he was a guest star for the second-season episode "Personal Demons".

He also appeared alongside Kevin Bacon in Quicksilver.

His stage work during the 1980s included Short Eyes (1984), and Loose Ends (1987), both produced at Second Stage Theatre in New York City.

Other film credits of Fishburne include Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985), Spike Lee's School Daze (1988), Abel Ferrara's King of New York (1990), Clint Eastwood's Mystic River (2003), Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (2011), and Richard Linklater's Last Flag Flying (2017).

Also in 1987 he played a part in the third A Nightmare on Elm Street film as a hospital orderly.

Fishburne featured in Red Heat (1988) beside Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Belushi.

Fishburne also starred as "Dap" in Spike Lee's School Daze (1988).

Fishburne's character was a depiction of an African American, culturally inclined college student at a historically black college.

In 1990, Fishburne played Jimmy Jump in the controversial King of New York, and in 1991, starred in Boyz n the Hood.

He won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in Two Trains Running (1992), and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his performance in TriBeCa (1993).

He received an Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead nomination for his performance in Deep Cover (1992).

The following year, in 1992, he won a Tony Award for his stage performance in the August Wilson play Two Trains Running and an Emmy Award for his performance in the opening episode, "The Box," of the short-lived anthology series television drama TriBeCa.

He also starred in Deep Cover alongside Jeff Goldblum.

For his portrayal of Ike Turner in What's Love Got to Do with It (1993), Fishburne was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.

In 1993, he received his first Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Ike Turner in What's Love Got to Do With It.

Fishburne became the first African American to portray Othello on film when he appeared in Oliver Parker's 1995 film adaptation of the Shakespeare play.

He has also received five Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.

He is known for playing Morpheus in The Matrix series (1999–2003), Jason "Furious" Styles in the John Singleton drama film Boyz n the Hood (1991), Tyrone "Mr. Clean" Miller in Francis Ford Coppola's war film Apocalypse Now (1979), and "The Bowery King" in the John Wick film series (2017–present).

On television, he starred as Dr. Raymond Langston on the CBS crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2008–2011), as Special Agent Jack Crawford in the NBC thriller series Hannibal (2013–2015), and as Earl "Pops" Johnson in the ABC sitcom Black-ish (2014–2022).

He is currently starring in the Broadway revival of David Mamet's play American Buffalo alongside Sam Rockwell and Darren Criss.

Fishburne was born in Augusta, Georgia, the son of Hattie Bell (née Crawford), a junior high school mathematics and science teacher, and Laurence John Fishburne, Jr., a juvenile corrections officer.

After his parents divorced during his childhood, he moved with his mother to Brooklyn, New York, where he was raised.

His father saw him once a month.

He has also gained a wider audience with the blockbuster films Man of Steel (2013), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018).

He later earned a supporting role in Apocalypse Now, in which he played Tyrone Miller, a cocky 17-year-old Gunner's Mate 3rd Class from the Bronx, nicknamed Mr. Clean.