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Laurence
Fishburne
Born
July 30, 1961, in Augusta, Georgia. His first
role in movies was in the movie Apocalypse Now, at
the tender age of 14. He wouldn't gain his
first starring role until 1992 in the movie Boyz in
the Hood, after having done just supporting roles
and minor parts. In 1994, in the movie What's
Love Got To Do With It, he played Ike Turner, a role
that would score him an Oscar nomination. He
would also take center stage in the special effects driven
box office hit The Matrix.
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Throughout
human history, we have been dependent on machines to
survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of
irony.
Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) form "The
Matrix" |
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Laurence Fishburne has
had his share of roles to play--and quite a
interesting menagerie, too. Mr. Clean (Apocalypse
Now), Morpheus (The Matrix), Furious Styles (Boyz
in the Hood), Hannibal Lee (The Tuskegee Airmen),
Socrates Fortlow (Always Outnumbered), Ike
Turner (What's Love Got To Do With It), Cowboy
Curtis (PeeWee's Playhouse- that's right; it's not
a mistake)--the list goes on and on.
Laurence Fishburne has a variety to the characters
he portrays.
One of my favorite
movies that Laurence Fishburne did that I loved
was "Always Outnumbered". The
character Socrates Fortlow became one of my
heroes. Here, you got a man who spent time
in jail, learned from his own shortcomings, gained
the wisdom to know that risking going back is a
fool's paradise, and despite being a former
convict and couldn't get a job at any local
business, he still went out to earn money any way
he could--legally. A lesser man would have never
swallowed enough pride to do menial labor or would
have chosen less than lawful means to earn
money. Socrates could have gone on to be a
drug dealer or a murderer, but he chose to play by
the rules. That is a example of a true role
model.
Another of my
favorites is his potrayal of Furious Styles in the
movie "Boyz in the Hood". Living
in South Central, trying to raise a son who's in a
bad element, dealing with cops who stopped caring
a long time ago, Furious could have given up a
long time ago. However, he chose not to give
into the gangbanging or drugs for his own sake and
his son's. Laurence's portrayal of Furious
Styles was awesome--not rehearsed, not
cookie-cut--totally believable. For these
reasons, Laurence Fishburne earned a place as one
of my favorites.
Check out some of
the movies below to see how versatile an actor
Laurence Fishburne has been:
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