In the early 1980s, he worked as a bouncer at punk rock clubs. įishburne spent much of the 1980s in and out of television and periodically on stage.
Filming took so long that he actually was 17 years old upon its completion. When production began in March 1976, he was just 14 years old, having lied about his age to get the part. 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. 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. Soon after, Fishburne portrayed Joshua Hall on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live. 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. Career 1972–1989įor most of his early career, he was credited as Larry Fishburne. Fishburne is a graduate of Lincoln Square Academy in New York, which closed in the 1980s. After his parents divorced during his childhood, he moved with his mother to Brooklyn, New York, where he was raised. He is currently starring in the Broadway revival of David Mamet's play American Buffalo alongside Sam Rockwell and Darren Criss.įishburne 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.
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–present).
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). 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). He received an Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead nomination for his performance in Deep Cover (1992).
He has also received five Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. 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 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). Clean" Miller in Francis Ford Coppola's war film Apocalypse Now (1979), and "The Bowery King" in the John Wick film series (2017–present).įor 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.
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. He has been hailed for his forceful, militant, and authoritative characters in his films. He is a three time Emmy Award and Tony Award winning actor known for his roles on stage and screen. Laurence John Fishburne III (born July 30, 1961) is an American actor.