"I was about 11 and we didn't have any money. we moved to south-central L.A.," he recalls. His dad, an insurance salesman, transplanted the family from Texas to Los Angeles when he was little.
Whitaker, who grew up in Compton and later attended college on a football scholarship, is now working the way he wants to. Based on real events, Johnson returns after 10 years in prison to find his former kingdom in shambles and the Genovese crime family his deadly rivals. One of those roles is the part of crime boss Bumpy Johnson in Epix's new series, "Godfather of Harlem," premiering Sunday. What am I doing? Not working the way I want to.' But the last few roles have been rejuvenating for me," he nods. "There was a period of time, five years, when I was just like, 'I'm not doing anything good. I was just working and continued to work hoping and expecting that something might happen (I was) without joy," he says. "I stopped being passionate and feeling it the way I wanted to,' says Whitaker. The 58-year-old actor, who has essayed everything from tough cops to Desmond Tutu, says he began to lose his zeal for performing about seven years ago. He won an Oscar for "Last King." Despite that, Whitaker says: "All that time I kept struggling, saying, 'How can I disappear and just let the character be there? Just be so deep into it that when people look at it they see THAT?' That's when I learned about something that I didn't know if it was possible to vibrate change so much, a certain way of thinking that people don't even see you - they see just the person (you're playing)." "I know it sounds crazy, but I think it was 'The Last King of Scotland' that made me say, 'OK, I can do it.'" "I was really proud I'd done it, but I couldn't watch it at first," Whitaker says. His role as jazz sax player Charlie Parker in "Bird" may have won him best actor at the Cannes Film Festival. I was testing it out for a long time wondering: Is this what I'm supposed to do? Is this where my destiny is? Am I going to be good enough to be able to make this my life's work?" "But it was after I worked for years and years actually, maybe after 'Bird' even - it was a long time into my career. "I decided I wanted to try to do it my second year of college," he says. Academy Award-winning actor Forest Whitaker had been acting for 25 years before he felt he was really up to the task.
0 kommentar(er)
