Laurence Fishburne | Encyclopedia.com (2025)

1961—

Actor

After working steadily in films, television, and plays for more than twenty-five years, Laurence Fishburne played what would arguably become his best-known role, as Morpheus, in the 1999 science fiction movie The Matrix; he reprised the role in two subsequent films, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (both 2003). After winning further acclaim on the stage in productions of August Wilson's Fences and in the one-man Broadway play Thurgood, based on the life of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Fishburne announced in 2008 that he would be joining the cast of the hit television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation the following year.

Fishburne was born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1961. His father, a corrections officer, frequently took him to the movies, but it was his mother, a schoolteacher, who introduced him to the stage. The family moved to a middle-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, when Laurence was young, and soon he was auditioning for parts in local plays. "I've always been an actor," he remarked to James Ryan in Premiere; he informed New York magazine that his first role was in the second grade: "I was Peter Pan, the boy who never grows up. I still am—I play make-believe for a living." At age ten he appeared in the play In My Many Names and Days at the New Federal Theater. "I played a little 10-year-old baseball freak from Brooklyn who used to dig going to Ebbitts Field and watching Jackie Robinson," Fishburne recalled to David Mills in the Washington Post.

Fishburne next landed a role in the 1972 television film If You Give a Dance, You Got to Pay the Band, which led to a part on the soap opera One Life to Live when he was eleven years old that lasted three years. One year after joining the daytime series, he appeared in the dramatic film Cornbread, Earl and Me. Fishburne told Patrick Pacheco in the Los Angeles Times that after Cornbread's release, "My father took all the guys at this juvenile correction facility in the Bronx to see it. Afterward, we got together and they told me that I was doing good, that I had something really fine going on for myself and that if I ever [messed] up, they'd be waiting. That kept me in line." The actor earned a part in a Negro Ensemble Theater production and was accepted into the prestigious High School of Perform- ing Arts in New York City. Then, at age fifteen, Fishburne embarked on the acting experience that would utterly transform him: a role as a member of the boat crew in Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now.

Grew Up on Apocalypse Set

Pacheco quoted Fishburne as saying that shooting Apocalypse was "the most formative event" of his life. He had a chance to observe several luminaries of American film acting—Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, and others—and to consult them for advice. Coppola taught Fishburne that acting "could be taken seriously, as art, with potential for educating, entertaining, and touching people." And in the drenching rain and chaos of filming in the Philippines, Fishburne lived a sporadically unsupervised fantasy of adolescence: "I was smoking reefer like everybody else," he told Pacheco. "My mother was there with me, but she couldn't control me so she called in the big guns, my father. Everybody in the company referred to him as ‘the jailer,’ but all he had to do was say, ‘OK, that's enough of that,’ and I'd come around."

Recalling his return to the United States, Fishburne recounted to Ryan, "I figured I was one of the baddest motherf—ers on the planet. And I came to L.A. and nobody gave a s—. I was really pissed off about that. I couldn't get work. I think a lot of people thought I was crazy, and I probably was." Fishburne made the second of what would be a series of appearances in Coppola films, portraying Midget in Rumble Fish, before playing a heavy in Death Wish II. "I was only getting work playing bad guys, and I wanted to be an actor and didn't want to wait tables," he said to Tom Perew in Black Elegance. "But I would have [done so, if necessary]." In what Mills called Fishburne's "least dignified professional moment," the actor's Death Wish character "shielded his head with a boom box while fleeing vigilante Charles Bronson."

Fishburne was concerned with balancing the roles he portrayed and combating Hollywood stereotypes. He succeeded by appearing in two more Coppola films, Gardens of Stone and The Cotton Club, as well as in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple. He also participated in the PBS drama For Us, the Living, based on the story of Medgar Evers, a crucial figure in the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Fishburne explained in the Los Angeles Times that "this is a gig where I had to put myself up and pay my own transportation, but to be involved with Roscoe Lee Browne, Howard Rollins, Dick Anthony Williams, Irene Cara. Well, that was my ancestors saying to me, ‘OK, here's some work we can do.’" He further confided that "I work with somebody on what is called ‘ancestral memory,’ and I find it a source of spiritual strength," because the struggles of the past "are not something to be embarrassed by, but a resource to be valued and respected."

At a Glance …

Born Lawrence Fishburne III on July 30, 1961, in Augusta, GA; son of Larry Jr. (a corrections officer) and Hattie (a teacher) Fishburne; married Hajna Moss (a casting agent and producer), 1987(?) (divorced); married Gina Torres (an actress), 2002; children: three.

Career: Actor appearing on stage, 1971(?)—, on television, 1972—, and in motion pictures, 1975—; television and motion picture film producer, 1997—; UNICEF ambassador, 1997—; motion picture director, 2000; screenplay writer, 2000.

Awards: Tony Award, Outer Critic's Circle Award, Drama Desk Award, and Theater World Award, all 1992, for Two Trains Running; Image Award for outstanding lead actor in a television movie or miniseries, 1996, for The Tuskegee Airmen; Emmy Award for outstanding guest actor in a drama series, 1997, for Tribeca; Cable ACE Award and Emmy Award for outstanding made for television movie, both 1997, and Image Award for outstanding lead actor in a television movie or miniseries and Television Producer of the Year Award in Longform, PGA Awards, both 1998, all for Miss Evers' Boys; Blockbuster Entertainment Award for favorite supporting actor, action/science fiction, and MTV Movie Award for best fight, both 2000, for The Matrix; Chicago International Film Festival Career Achievement Award, 2000; BSFC Award for best ensemble cast, 2003, for Mystic River; Black Movie Award for outstanding performance by an actor in a supporting role, 2006, for Akeelah and the Bee; Hollywood Film Award for ensemble of the year, 2006, for Bobby; Special Award for best ensemble, ShoWest Convention USA, 2008, for 21.

Addresses: Office—c/o CBS Television, 51 W. 52nd St., New York, NY 10019. Web—http://www.laurence-fishburne.com.

Took Diverse Film Roles

In the meantime, an ambitious young director had been keeping an eye on Fishburne. One day in the mid- 1980s, reported Mills, Fishburne was watching a street performance when someone tapped him on the shoulder. "I don't know who this guy is. He says, ‘You're Larry Fishburne…. You're a good actor.’ So he introduced himself and said he was from Brooklyn and he was making movies." The Brooklyn filmmaker was Spike Lee, who wanted Fishburne to appear in a film called Messenger. The movie was never made, but Lee used Fishburne in School Daze; the actor played the campus activist Dap in that collegiate musical comedy.

Fishburne later passed up the role of Radio Raheem in Lee's 1988 smash Do the Right Thing, criticizing the film's plot for straying from reality. "I'm from Brooklyn too," he told Mills. "And I didn't grow up in that kind of Brooklyn." Though Fishburne experienced some friction with Lee, the actor's refusal of roles in subsequent Lee films has evidently had more to do with Fishburne's desire for a starring part than any lingering hard feelings.

While working on School Daze, Fishburne met Hajna Moss, a casting agent and producer. The two eventually married and had two children, settling in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Fishburne accepted the role of an orderly in the horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street III in order to make the down payment on a house. "My wife likes horror movies, we wanted to buy a house, and they offered me a gig," he explained to Ryan. "[The film's supernatural villain Freddy Krueger] and I never met." He and Moss divorced in the 1990s. Fishburne also played a cop in the thriller Red Heat, and, starting in the late 1980s, had the recurring role of the lovable Cowboy Curtis on the Saturday morning television series Pee-Wee's Playhouse. Among his other television projects were the film A Rumor of War and guest appearances on episodes of Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice.

Took on More Prominent Roles

In 1990 Fishburne landed an important role playing "New Jack Gangster" Jimmy Jump in Abel Ferrara's King of New York, costarring Christopher Walken and Wesley Snipes. Though the part was originally written for an Italian-American, Fishburne lobbied for it. His extravagant and overblown performance portraying what he called a "lovable badman" was lauded by critics. Fishburne also began working with playwright August Wilson in 1990 to develop the character of Sterling in the play Two Trains Running.

True to his commitment to balance the cinematic "nuts" with responsible characters, Fishburne played an attorney working for activist lawyer Gene Hackman in Michael Apted's 1991 film Class Action. Sight and Sound praised "a perfectly formed performance from Larry Fishburne, a great black actor spoiling for a part in something really big." Fishburne also appeared in Martin Sheen's Cadence, a military drama costarring Sheen and his son Charlie.

Fishburne's next big project was Boyz n the Hood, a film directed by then-twenty-three-year-old John Singleton, who had been a production assistant on Pee-Wee's Playhouse. As Furious Styles, the entrepreneur-activist father who guides his son out of trouble, Fishburne earned rave reviews. Sight and Sound declared, "Larry Fishburne continues to be a matchless screen presence in the central role of Furious," while Stanley Kauffmann in the New Republic wrote that the actor "brings an even-tempered, unforced authority to the role."

Even critics who disliked the film's tone admired Fishburne's work. Ralph Novak in People noted that Fishburne "acts his way through most of Singleton's verbiage, conveying the determination of a father trying to give his son a chance." Edmond Grant in Films in Review lamented that "the finest actor in the film … gets the corniest role." Christine Dolen of the Detroit Free Press observed that with Boyz Fishburne "seemed to leap, like a major movie star at the height of his power, from the screen into our startled and appreciative consciousness." Fishburne is quoted in the same piece as saying that "Boyz n The Hood did take my career to a different level. But I did what I've been doing for the last 20 years. I think it was the power of the whole film. I give the credit to the writing and the execution of that film."

Won Awards for Stage Role

For his next role, in Wilson's stage play Two Trains Running, which opened on Broadway in 1992, Fishburne won a Tony Award for best featured actor in a play and also picked up Outer Critic's Circle, Drama Desk, and Theater World awards. As Sterling, an ex-convict espousing the black empowerment philosophy of civil rights activist Malcolm X, Fishburne once again stunned the critics. Frank Rich in the New York Times wrote that the actor "greets each of Sterling's defeats with pride and heroic optimism" and called Fishburne and his costar Roscoe Lee Browne "the jewels of the production."

Perew claimed that Fishburne's work in Two Trains Running "should convince any doubters that Larry Fishburne will forever play lead roles" and added: "Watching the play, you get black history the way Sterling has seen it. Fishburne is quirky, insightful, often humorous and, finally, a profound Sterling." Of the role, the actor himself stated in his interview with Pacheco that "Sterling's a man with an idea, and that's what makes him dangerous," and that the character has "just got out of jail, he's got no money and he's got no job. When a brother's got to get himself a hustle, that makes him dangerous." He told Dolen that working with Browne, Wilson, and director Lloyd Richards was a bigger thrill than winning a Tony: "This is the longest time I've worked in the theater. It's the most exciting; it requires real discipline and develops your concentration to a level that I know when I come off this, no matter what the part is in what movie, I'll be able to do it. Because I feel like a bona fide actor now."

Returning to film in 1992, Fishburne portrayed a genuinely challenging character in Deep Cover: Russell Stevens Jr., an undercover cop who gets drawn into the world of drug dealing and begins to lose his moral bearings. Director Bill Duke found Fishburne's subtlety and range perfect for the part: "Larry can show a side of himself that will do whatever is necessary to get what he wants. He becomes as ferocious a bad guy as [he does] a cop. Looking in Larry's eyes, you don't see a lie, and that's what you want in an actor," Duke observed to Ryan, adding that he found Fishburne "confident but not egotistical." Commenting on Duke's improvisational, actor-centered approach, Fishburne observed in an Entertainment Weekly profile, "It's collaborative here. Everyone throws in his two cents." Duke contended in the same article that Fishburne was at first uneasy with the director's approach: "Larry hated working with me in the beginning. He's used to rehearsing a scene the way it's going to be shot. I said, ‘Larry, that's not how I work.’ It always made him nervous, but he started to trust me and we had a good collaboration."

Fishburne himself found playing Stevens a rich opportunity. "What makes Stevens special for me," he told Ryan, "is he's a cop and he's a criminal at the same time. He has to do bad in order to do good. White actors get to play this type of stuff a lot, and we don't. It's an opportunity to show up and be a man on the screen—not a black man, not a white man, not a superman, just a man." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly pointed to Fishburne's performance as one of the strengths of a film he judged inconsistent: "Fishburne, with his hair-trigger line readings and deadly reptilian gaze, conveys the controlled desperation of someone watching his faith unravel."

Performed More Multilayered Roles

In 1993 Fishburne again played a character with a dark side when he starred opposite Angela Bassett in the movie version of singer Tina Turner's autobiography, What's Love Got to Do with It. Although he initially turned down the role of Turner's abusive husband, Ike Turner, because he thought it was too one-sidedly evil to be realistic, the opportunity to work with Bassett again (they acted opposite each other in Boyz n the Hood) proved to be too much of a draw. But rather than accept the flat character, Fishburne reworked his portrayal of Ike to demonstrate the humanizing charm that made Ike so attractive prior to his descent into drug abuse and violence. Rita Kempley in the Washington Post said, "Fishburne's performance is astounding for the humanity he brings to the thinly-drawn Ike." That same year he stepped down from star billing in order to play a street-smart chess player in Searching for Bobby Fischer. Fishburne's character mentors a young chess prodigy who resists outside pressure to play chess competitively.

The year 1995 was a full one for the actor as six of his projects came to life. In a career move not unlike his decision to act in For Us, the Living, Fishburne took a pay cut in order to lend the weight of his celebrity to the HBO movie The Tuskegee Airmen. He played Hannibal Lee, a pilot who endures racial prejudice in the course of his flying career with the all-black 99th Squadron of the 332d Fighter Group of the U.S. Air Force during World War II. Fishburne earned an Emmy nomination for his performance in this dramatization of the real-life elite fighting unit.

For the movie Higher Learning Fishburne once again teamed up with director John Singleton, this time to play a West Indian professor at an American university that is a racial and ideological war zone. Although the role of Professor Phipps is a smaller one in the film, critic Roger Ebert remarked that Fishburne's portrayal is "all the more effective because it is so subtle." While some critics found Singleton's characterizations rigidly stereotypical and the plot overblown, Fishburne was singled out in reviews time and again as outstanding.

Earned Accolades Playing Othello

In 1995 Fishburne became the first African American to play Shakespeare's Othello on the silver screen. Following in the footsteps of such legendary actors as Sir Laurence Olivier and Orson Welles, Fishburne brought the Moor Othello to life in the 1995 production, which also starred Kenneth Branagh as Iago and Irene Jacob as Desdemona. While critics debated the merits of this version, which cut the play by a third, Fishburne received good reviews for a role he admitted scared him initially. "It's definitely scary before you start. And harder to shake off afterwards. After all, Othello has been around for almost 400 years," he remarked in an interview with Insight on the News. Even though some critics faulted his inexperience with Elizabethan English for the diminished impact of his lines, the sheer charisma of Fishburne's screen presence won over audiences. Janet Matlin in the New York Times wrote, "With no previous Shakespearean experience, he at first displays an improbable loftiness, sounding very much the rarified thespian beside Mr. Branagh's deceptively regular Joe. But Mr. Fishburne's performance has a dangerous edge that ultimately works to its advantage, and he smolders movingly through the most anguished parts of the role."

In 1997 Fishburne became involved with another HBO movie based on historical facts when he starred with Alfre Woodard in Miss Evers' Boys. The story is based on an actual medical experiment conducted by the United States government between 1932 and 1972, in which African-American men suffering from syphilis were left untreated so that the effects of the disease could be studied. Woodard played a nurse, Miss Evers, who acts as friend and confidante to the men while, at the same time, she is aware of the deception her participation in the experiment necessitates. Fishburne played one of the victims of the experiment who becomes Miss Evers' romantic interest. Fishburne was also a producer of the movie, which won numerous awards and honors, including an Emmy.

In 1998 Fishburne played a compassionate ex-convict in the HBO movie Always Outnumbered. Based on stories by acclaimed African-American author Walter Mosely, the story follows Socrates Fortlow—Fishburne's character—as he attempts to help his community after serving nearly thirty years in jail. The positive portrayal of African-American men is particularly important to Fishburne, who acknowledged in a Jet article the scarcity of such images in movies. "Socrates is a character who reminds people that not all [African-American men] are ignorant, not all of us beat up women, not all of us are what you would think we are. Most of us are decent human beings."

Faced Unreality in The Matrix

Fishburne closed out the century in the reality-bending science-fiction thriller The Matrix. Also starring Keanu Reeves, the cerebral action movie concerns a group of rebels who are trying to expose the matrix, a virtual reality that has been imposed on humanity by a machine to fool them into believing that they are free. Fishburne played Morpheus, the leader of this collection of renegades, who recruits Reeves's character to spearhead the rebellion. The movie raised many philosophical issues, including those related to Eastern religions, Gnostic Christianity, cyberpunk, and the mind-body connection, and visually it paid homage to Japanese anime and the martial arts film genre. A critical and box office triumph, winning four Academy Awards and earning nearly half a billion dollars worldwide, The Matrix also became a pop-culture tour-de-force, inspiring video games, fan sites and blogs, and academic probing into its meaning. Peter Travers summed up the Matrix effect in Rolling Stone: "Not since 2001: A Space Odyssey and the first Star Wars trilogy has the youth audience latched onto a cinematic vision of a future generation and mined it so vigorously for truth about its own."

In May of 2003 the second film in the Matrix trilogy was released. The Matrix Reloaded picked up the story of the last human city of Zion, with Fishburne reprising his role as Morpheus, captain of the hovercraft Nebuchadnezzar. Although Reloaded was one of the most anticipated sequels in film history, critics were less than enthusiastic, and fans, in many cases, left the theatre more confused than satisfied. Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times noted, "Good intentions and great effects notwithstanding, in dramatic terms this is basically an expensive place holder, a rest stop where the narrative can catch its breath before moving on." In November of 2003 the Matrix story did move on, to its conclusion, with the release of The Matrix Revolutions. While Matrix diehards—and they number in the millions—continued to find meaning and relevance in the final film, critics failed to see the draw. Travers in Rolling Stone wrote succinctly, "At the risk of overstatement, The Matrix Revolutions sucks." Nevertheless, fascination with The Matrix continued, and Fishburne lent his vocal talents to two Matrix video games, in 2003 and 2005.

Fishburne's next two projects teamed him again with What's Love Got to Do with It costar Bassett. In Akeelah and the Bee Fishburne played an English professor who supports a young girl's dream of winning a national spelling bee, with Bassett playing the girl's mother. In their reviews critics simultaneously lambasted the film for its stereotypical characters and formulaic plot and cheered its good intentions and fine performances, particularly that of Fishburne, who, as some reviewers noted, brought much-needed gravity to an otherwise light movie. Similarly, Fishburne was praised for his role as a former Negro League baseball player in a 2006 Pasadena Playhouse production of Wilson's Fences, in which he starred with Bassett. Critics noted that the two actors revived the sexual tension and relationship nuances they had created so successfully as Ike and Tina Turner.

Played Animated Characters and Supreme Court Judge

In late 2006 Fishburne was part of a large ensemble cast in Emilio Estevez's directorial debut, Bobby, which explored seemingly unrelated events surrounding the assassination of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. For his next two films, Fishburne chose much lighter material, and in fact never actually appeared on screen. In 2007 he narrated a computer-generated animation version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and provided the voice of the Silver Surfer in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. In 2008 Fishburne switched gears once more, playing a casino enforcer in the card-counting movie 21. None of these films did well at the box office or with critics.

In mid-2008, however, Fishburne returned to the stage in a Broadway production of Thurgood, a one-man show based on the life and career of Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice. Presented as a lecture given by Marshall to a class of students at Howard University, Marshall's alma mater, the play features Fishburne gradually becoming younger as he recounts the events that led to his rise from civil rights activist and NAACP attorney to Supreme Court justice. Written by first-time playwright George Stevens Jr., Thurgood received mixed reviews for what some critics considered an overly long, plodding storyline. Fishburne's performance, however, was widely admired. Reviewer Brian Scott Lipton wrote on the TheaterMania Web site that Fishburne "instantly commands the stage with consummate ease, wringing enormous humor, pathos, and, above all, inspiration from his subject's life and Stevens' words…. In fact, he is now a serious contender to earn his second Tony Award."

Selected works

Films, as actor

Cornbread, Earl and Me (as Laurence Fishburne III), 1975.

Television, as actor

If You Give a Dance, You Gotta Pay the Band (movie), 1972.

One Life to Live (series), 1973-76.

The Six O'Clock Follies (series), 1980.

A Rumor of War (movie), 1980.

Trapper John, MD (series), 1981.

MASH (series), 1982.

Strike Force (series), 1982.

I Take These Men (movie), 1983.

For Us, the Living: The Medgar Evers Story (movie), 1983.

Hill Street Blues (series), 1986.

Miami Vice (series; as Larry Fishburne), 1986.

Pee-Wee's Playhouse (series; as Larry Fishburne), 1986-87.

Spenser: For Hire (series), 1987.

The Equalizer (series), 1989.

Decoration Day (movie), 1990.

The American Experience (series), 1991.

Tribeca (series), 1993.

The Tuskegee Airmen (movie), 1995.

(And executive producer) Miss Evers' Boys (movie), 1997.

(And executive producer) Always Outnumbered (movie), 1998.

Decoded: The Making of "The Matrix Reloaded" (documentary), 2003.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (series), beginning 2009.

Plays, as actor

In My Many Names and Days, New Federal Theater, New York City, 1971(?).

Eden, St. Mark's Playhouse, New York City, 1976.

Short Eyes, McGinn-Cazale Theatre, New York City, 1985.

Loose Ends, McGinn-Cazale Theatre, New York City, 1988.

Two Trains Running, Walter Kerr Theatre, New York City, 1992.

The Lion in Winter, Criterion Center Stage Right, New York City, 1999.

Fences, Pasadena Playhouse, Pasadena, CA, 2006.

Thurgood, Broadway production, 2008.

Video Games

Enter the Matrix, 2003.

The Matrix Online, 2005.

True Crime: New York City, 2005.

Sources

Periodicals

Back Stage, March 26, 1999.

Black Elegance, June/July 1992.

Chicago Sun-Times, January 11, 1995; December 29, 1995.

Detroit Free Press, June 2, 1992.

Entertainment Weekly, April 24, 1992.

Film Comment, July/August 1990.

Films in Review, February 1992.

Insight on the News, January 15, 1996.

Jet, July 15, 1991; February 24, 1997; March 23, 1998.

Los Angeles Times, January 12, 1992; May 14, 2003.

New Republic, September 2, 1991.

New York, July 22, 1991.

New York Times, April 14, 1992.

Newsweek, July 15, 1991.

Parade, June 28, 1992.

People, March 25, 1991; April 1, 1991; July 22, 1991.

Premiere, May 1992.

Rolling Stone, May 14, 2003; November 3, 2003.

San Francisco Chronicle, August 4, 1995; August 27, 1997.

Sight and Sound, July 1991; August 1991; November 1991.

Time, May 11, 1992.

Variety, August 18, 1997.

Video Review, March 1992.

Washington Post, July 7, 1991; June 11, 1993; January 20, 1995; December 29, 1995.

Online

Laurence Fishburne Official Web Site, http://www.laurence-fishburne.com.

Lipton, Brian Scott, "Thurgood," TheaterMania, May 1, 2008, http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/13713 (accessed September 30, 2008).

Other

Additional information for this profile was obtained from a press biography on Fishburne.

—Simon Glickman, Rebecca Parks,
and Nancy Dziedzic