actor
Personal Information
Born December 17, 1970, in Wilmington, DE; son of Carlton (an engineer) and Cheryl (an accountant) Thomas
Education: Earned degree from University of Virginia; New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, M.F.A., 1995.
Career
Began acting in college productions at the University of Virginia; appeared in Timon of Athens at the Public Theater, New York; appeared in the films Courage Under Fire, 1996; Conspiracy Theory, 1997; and Cruel Intentions, 1999; cast in first leading role in Save the Last Dance, 2001.
Life's Work
Actor Sean Patrick Thomas won accolades for his lead in the interracial teen dance-romance film, Save the Last Dance, in 2001. Thomas was cast as an extroverted hip-hop dancer who falls in love with a new student at his school, a troubled ballerina played by Julia Stiles. The breakthrough part gave him a much-needed dose of confidence as a black actor in Hollywood, where challenging, well-rounded film roles remain scarce. The critically acclaimed performance, Thomas told Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Bob Longino, "changed my life to the extent I have a lot more physical confidence. I've always had confidence about my intellect and my educational background. But I've never been confident about myself physically in terms of dancing, and dancing with a woman. I'm a lot more confident that I can try something and get away with it on film."
Thomas was born in December of 1970, the oldest of three children of parents who were immigrants from Guyana, a small nation on the northeast coast of South America. He grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, a city dominated by the Du Pont chemical company, for which both his parents worked. He was one of just a handful of black students at his high school and, because of his parents' Caribbean origin, felt markedly different from the few other African Americans at Brandywine High, who arrived on buses every morning from the Washington, DC area. He encountered occasional racism; at one point he attempted to enroll in an honors English course but was thwarted by a teacher. She assigned him to a regular English course instead, and he went to her to clear up the matter. She voiced doubts about his abilities, but he held firm and was able to take the advanced-placement class. The episode angered him, as he recalled in an interview with the New York Post: "That's a big deal ... something like that could set you back educationally. And to have a teacher treat you like that who has no idea what your abilities are, that's dangerous."
Thomas excelled in school, and after graduation began studying at the University of Virginia. There he majored in English with an eye toward a career in journalism, but he soon began acting in school drama productions such as the classic Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun. After graduation his parents hoped that he might choose law school, but instead Thomas headed to New York City and earned a master's degree in fine arts from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 1995. He acted in NYU productions, appeared in Timon of Athens at the Public Theater, and waited tables to make ends meet. Once, he took a "gang member" part on the daytime drama One Life to Live, a relatively lucrative job but one that he immediately regretted. "It was bad. Way bad," he recalled in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution interview with Longino. "Horrible. Knife. Bandanna on. The cutoff T- shirt."
Vowing to avoid such typecasting in the future, Thomas moved to Los Angeles and earned money by winning television commercial jobs. He also worked as a tutor for Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) preparation courses and as a substitute teacher. Still offered the occasional hoodlum role, or parts in substandard comic films, he felt stymied as a black actor in Hollywood. "It was just frustrating in the sense that when you walk into a room, people expect you to bring the funny stuff or street stuff to the table because of what you look like," he told the Christian Science Monitor. "That's just not what I bring to the table."
Thomas's fortunes began to change when he appeared in Courage Under Fire, a 1996 film that starred Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan. He also had a small speaking part in Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson, among other films. His breakthrough, however, came with the 1999 teen movie Cruel Intentions, in which he was cast as Ronald Clifford, a cello instructor and part of a complex romantic conspiracy concocted by the lead characters. The film starred Ryan Philippe and Sara Michelle Gellar, and Thomas dallied on-screen with a character played by Selma Blair. The movie was a commercial success, and Thomas reprised the role in a television spin-off called Manchester Prep, which never aired. In 2000 he appeared in a new CBS series, The District. He was cast as Washington, D.C. detective Temple Page, a character who possessed an almost military-style devotion to his job. Craig T. Nelson played the police chief in the show, and referred to his junior as "Sidney" on the set, a reference to veteran actor Sidney Poitier. As Nelson told People, Thomas possessed "that kind of class, that kind of range."
Thomas's breakthrough film role came in 2001 with Save the Last Dance, though it was a tough part for him to win. The story was set at a high school on Chicago's South Side, and its producers were hoping to cast a trained dancer for the lead, and then provide him with a drama teacher. Thomas had the thespian talent, but was lacking the requisite dance moves. He was told, as he recalled in the interview with Longino for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "'You're too old. You aren't urban. And you can't dance.'" Thomas held out, won the role, and trained vigorously. He was proud that a double was used for just a quarter or so of his dance scenes. It was, however, a marked departure from his own high school experiences in the 1980s. "I wasn't cool in high school," Thomas told the New York Post. "I've always been a kind of wallflower, the guy who sits off to the side, bobs his head and watches everybody else have fun."
In Save the Last Dance, Thomas plays Derek, a highly-regarded hip-hop dancer among his crowd in Julia Stiles was cast as Sara, a teen ballerina whose mother died in a car crash while speeding to witness her daughter's tryout for the ballet program at the prestigious Julliard School. Devastated, Sara is forced to move in with her jazz musician father, whom she barely knows, and transfer to a new high school. Culture shock ensues, but she finds an unexpected friend in Derek, who begins taking her out to dance in clubs. Friendship turns to romance, and he helps her come to terms with her loss; she also begins to rethink her jettisoned career plans. "Sara, in turn, forces Derek to open his eyes to the unsavory crowd he's been hanging out with, and to pursue his career aspirations with as much diligence as he has compelled her to pursue hers," noted Winston- Salem Journal writer Mark Burger.
Save the Last Dance was a surprise box-office hit in early 2001. It nearly set an opening-weekend record in the history of January-released films, and won strong praise from critics. Variety's Robert Koehler asserted that the film "backs away from what could have been a half-baked 'Romeo and Juliet'-like tragedy, and ends on an appropriate note of optimism." Koehler praised Thomas's performance, comparing him to Rob Brown in Finding Forrester: "Despite his impossibly good character ... Thomas projects a potently attractive self-confidence that would win over a gal like Sara." Furthermore, the film's deftly handled interracial romance was viewed as a breakthrough in the teen-movie genre. Thomas was pleased at this particular aspect of the film. "I feel like our film didn't tiptoe around it, because we weren't working on that level," he told Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service writer Steven Rea. "We were just working on the level (of) these are two people who dig each other. And when two people dig each other, what do they do?" The pair even earned an MTV Movie Award for best kiss that year.
Thomas, whose upcoming film performances in 2002 were slated to be in Halloween: Resurrection and Barbershop, was surprised at the relatively easy career path he trod to his first leading man role. "I assumed I'd be driving cabs, waiting tables," he told Rea about his expectations for his first few years in Hollywood. "So, to see your name in bold print, star billing--I remember when the studio sent me a small copy (of the poster), I just put it up on my mantelpiece and stared at it in disbelief."
Further Reading
Periodicals
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 12, 2001.
- Christian Science Monitor, January 26, 2001, p. 19.
- Ebony, April 2001, p. 32.
- Entertainment Weekly, November 16, 2001.
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, January 12, 2001.
- New York Post, January 7, 2001, p. 40.
- People, March 12, 2001, p. 113; June 18, 2001, p. 130.
- Teen, September, 2000, p. 66.
- Variety, June 23, 1997, p. 103; October 25, 1999, p. 41; January 8, 2001, p. 37;.
- Winston-Salem Journal, January 12, 2001, p. E1.
— Carol Brennan
