Anthony Mackie

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Anthony Mackie
Mackie at the 2008 Tribeca All Access awards
Born	(1979-09-23) September 23, 1979 (age 32) New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Education	Juilliard School (2001)
Occupation	Actor
Years active	2002–present

Anthony Mackie (born September 23, 1979)^[1] is an American actor. He has been featured in feature films, television series and Broadway and Off-Broadway plays, including Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Drowning Crow, McReele, A Soldier's Play, and Talk, by Carl Hancock Rux, for which he won an Obie Award in 2002.

In 2002, he was featured in Eminem's debut film, 8 Mile, playing Papa Doc, a member of Leaders of the Free World. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 2009 Independent Spirit Awards for his role in The Hurt Locker. This is Mackie's second ISA nomination, the first coming for his work in 2003 in Brother to Brother, where he was nominated for Best Actor.^[2] Also in 2009, Mackie portrayed rapper Tupac Shakur in the film Notorious.^[3] He appears in the 2011 Matt Damon film The Adjustment Bureau where he plays Harry Mitchell, a sympathetic member of a shadowy supernatural group that controls human destiny.

Early life and education

Mackie was born in New Orleans, Louisiana,^[4] the son of Martha G. and Willie Mackie.^[5] He attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and graduated from the high school drama program at the North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA) in 1997.^[6] He later graduated from the Juilliard School's Drama Division as a member of Group 30 (1997–2001), which also included actors Tracie Thoms and Lee Pace.^[7]

Career

In 2002, Mackie worked as an understudy to Don Cheadle in Suzan-Lori Parks' play Topdog/Underdog and won an OBIE Award for his role in Carl Hancock Rux's play Talk. His first starring role in a feature film was in the 2003 independent film Brother to Brother, where he played Perry, a young African-American artist who struggles to adjust to the world as a black homosexual. He appeared in the 2002 film 8 Mile, as Papa Doc, Eminem's nemesis. Mackie would later go on to star as a man who struggles to adjust to the world he's created after becoming a corporate whistleblower and later starting a business impregnating lesbians for a fee in Spike Lee's 2004 film She Hate Me.

Mackie appeared as rapper Tupac Shakur in the January 2009 film Notorious. He first played Shakur on Off-Off Broadway (while still at Juilliard) in 2001 in the play Up Against the Wind, which also featured his classmate Thoms. Other films in the works include biopics of Olympian Jesse Owens, Antebellum slave revolt leader Nat Turner, and cornetist and jazz musician Buddy Bolden.

In March 2008, Mackie starred in three plays by playwright August Wilson at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in the Washington DC: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Fences, and Jitney – all part of "August Wilson's 20th Century", a month-long presentation of ten staged readings of Wilson's "Century Cycle". Mackie has participated several times in the "24-Hour Plays" held in New York City each fall.^[8]

In the summer of 2009, he played the role of Pentheus in the New York City Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park production of The Bacchae.^[9]

He starred with Christopher Walken in A Behanding in Spokane on Broadway, which opened February 15, 2010. Mackie also narrated The Best That Never Was, director Jonathan Hock's documentary for the ESPN 30 for 30 series about the Philadelphia, MS native and football star Marcus Dupree.

Personal life

Mackie and his longtime girlfriend welcomed a baby boy in the Spring of 2009. In the summer of 2011, he opened the bar, NoBar in Brooklyn, New York.^[10]

His brother, Calvin Mackie, is an Associate Professor at Tulane University.^[11]

Filmography

References

External links

• Anthony Mackie at the Internet Movie Database
• Feinberg, Scott (February 3, 2007). "The Best Actor You Haven't Heard of (Yet)". (Interview) AndTheWinnerIs.blog.com. Archived from the original on May 15, 2009. http://andthewinneris.blog.com/2007/02/03/the-best-actoryou-havent-heard-of-yet/. Retrieved September 28, 2011.