actor
Personal Information
Born on July 31, 1962, in Orlando, FL; son of an aircraft engineer and a teacher's aide; married, 1985 (divorced, 1990); children: Jelani (son).
Education: State University of New York at Purchase, B.A., 1984.
Career
Actor in motion pictures, stage plays, and on television, 1985--. Selected stage appearances include The Me Nobody Knows, The Boys of Winter, Death and the King's Horsemen, and Execution of Justice. Also appeared in HBO's Vietnam Story, 1987, America's Dream, 1996, and Michael Jackson's music video Bad, 1987. Film appearances include roles in Wildcats, 1985, Streets of Gold, 1986, Major League, 1989, King of New York, 1990, Mo' Better Blues, 1990, New Jack City, 1991, Jungle Fever, 1991, White Men Can't Jump, 1992, The Waterdance, 1992, Passenger 57, 1992, Boiling Point, 1993, Demolition Man, 1993, Rising Sun, 1993, Drop Zone, 1994, Sugar Hill, 1994, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, 1995, Waiting to Exhale, 1995, The Fan, 1996, Murder at 1600, 1997, One Night Stand, 1997, U.S. Marshals, 1998, Down in the Delta, 1998, Blade, 1998.
Life's Work
Before reaching the age of 30, actor Wesley Snipes was already recognized as an important new figure in his field. His picture graced the cover of Newsweek and Jet magazines, and New Yorker magazine critic Pauline Kael dubbed him one of the most impressive members of a new generation of American actors. Snipes came to be considered one of the chief players in the film industry and an enduring, mesmerizing talent.
Snipes was born on July 31, 1962, in Orlando, Florida. His father, an aircraft engineer, and his mother, Marian, then a teacher's aide, divorced a year after his birth. His mother then moved him and two of his seven siblings to the South Bronx section of New York, where he spent his childhood honing negotiating skills. Snipes stood 5 feet 5 inches tall when in high school--he eventually grew 6 more inches--and substituted bravado, boldness, and charm for height at that time, which in turn served as a solid foundation for his adult life.
Snipes's aunt Della Saunders entered him in talent shows when he was a child. One of those led to a minor role in the off-Broadway play The Me Nobody Knows when Snipes was 12 years old. Frequent auditions and basketball practice kept him busy in high school, and his competitive nature helped ensure that he would fare well academically. His keen interest in dance led him to enroll in New York's High School of the Performing Arts, known for its strong dance department. Snipes was content there, so two years later, when his mother decided to move the family back to Orlando, the teenager complained bitterly. He had become a regular at the local pool hall and was so good at the game that he made money hustling pool. His mother decided it was time for a change of atmosphere.
Seeds of Raw Talent
After attending a multiethnic elementary school in the South Bronx, and then the High School of the Performing Arts, Snipes suddenly found himself in a predominantly African American public school in Orlando, and his fast-paced style was at odds with Southern sensibilities. In an interview with Washington Post contributor Jay Mathews, Snipes described how he felt when he first went to Orlando: ''They're just moseying along, like lemonade on the porch on a Sunday afternoon, and you're like, yo, I can't stand this. Let me outta here."
The drama department of Jones High School in Orlando soon took his mind off of what he had left behind when they started casting for Damn Yankees. Snipes was given a warm reception in the theater department and wasn't modest when it came to letting it be known that he had attended the High School of the Performing Arts. He earned spending money in high school by joining a city-sponsored drama troupe called Struttin' Street Stuff and performed puppet shows in parks and schools for up to $70 a week. Around the same time, he also won an award for his one-man show playing Puck, a character from William Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, and had a successful run playing Felix Ungar in The Odd Couple.
Snipes told Stephen Holden of the New York Times: ''Moving to Florida was the best thing that could have happened to me. A lot of the cats I grew up with in the South Bronx found themselves in sticky situations." Karen Rugerio, Snipes's drama teacher at Jones High, told the Washington Post: ''He was always very focused. If you criticize the work of someone at that age, they often get upset, but Wes would always listen very carefully, wanting to learn how he could do it better."
Shaped by Experiences in College
When it came time for college, Snipes auditioned for the State University of New York at Purchase's esteemed theater arts program and was readily accepted, receiving a Victor Borge scholarship. As Snipes explained to Larry Rohter of the New York Times, he fell into acting through the urging of others who saw that he was a natural. ''I really wanted to be a singer and dancer," he said, ''and I still have a latent passion for that. When I see Alvin Ailey or Chuck Davis or Forces of Nature, I'm sitting there saying 'I could have been up there."'
Snipes was one of only four African American students in the theater arts department at SUNY Purchase, and he told Ebony magazine that it was a disconcerting experience: ''I felt like mold on white bread.... What saved me was being exposed to Malcolm X." The emphasis on African American pride found in the writings of Malcolm X helped Snipes weather a confusing period in his life: an African American man coming of age while surrounded by whites. He became a Muslim for a short time, starting in the second semester of his freshman year, then abandoned the faith three years after he graduated. He revealed to Randolph: ''A brother of mine used to say 'When you're drowning, grab onto a log to keep afloat. But don't hold on to the log when the boat comes by. Get on the boat and bring your butt on back home.' So Islam for me was the log to make me more conscious of what African people have accomplished, of my self-worth, to give me some self-dignity."
While in college, Snipes auditioned for Harry Belafonte's movie about break-dancers called Beat Street and realized that in addition to applying standard acting techniques, he also had to draw more from his own life-experience on the street. He didn't land a part in the movie, but it was a learning experience for him. Although Snipes was never given the role of leading male in any of the university productions--in spite of his obvious talents and experience--after he left college to pursue professional work, he quickly became a leading man who was very much in demand. David Garfield, an acting teacher at SUNY Purchase, told the Los Angeles Times that Snipes was ''obviously gifted. He was extremely funny, he could do straight drama, he could sing and he would stop shows with the dance numbers he had choreographed. He also exhibited a strong black consciousness even then."
Steady Climb to Fame
Snipes met his wife while a senior in college, and they married a year after he graduated in 1984. He took a job installing telephones in New York, and that same year a casting director who had spotted him at a university drama convention contacted him for Goldie Hawn's football parody Wildcats after the first choice actor didn't work out. Then, along with Matt Dillon and Andrew McCarthy, Snipes procured a leading role in John Pielmeier's off-Broadway play The Boys Of Winter, about the ravaging effects of the Vietnam War on U.S. soldiers, and followed with a role in the Lincoln Center production of Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horsemen. After this, true to his flexible nature, he put on spike heels to portray drag queen Sister Boom-Boom in Emily Mann's Broadway play Execution of Justice. Mann told the Los Angeles Times: ''I remember when he auditioned. I had never seen a man put on high heels and walk that way and all of us said 'That guy is going to be a star.'"
Because Snipes pursued an interest in martial arts, and because he has the natural grace and balance of a dancer, he was well-cast as an athlete. In 1986, Snipes portrayed a boxer in the film Streets of Gold. Then he experienced a short lull in his career, so he turned to other pursuits for his livelihood. Therapeutic massage and parking cars were two of the things Snipes tried in 1987 before landing a role in HBO's Vietnam Story. He eventually won the cable industry's ACE Award for best actor for his work in Vietnam Story.
In 1987, Snipes also appeared in Michael Jackson's Bad video, and this cameo role changed the course of his fate. Snipes portrayed a gang leader who shoved Michael Jackson up against a wall, and in doing so, caught the attention of director Spike Lee and New Jack City co-screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper. Lee commented to Premier magazine's Ralph Rugoff that Snipes ''was so real, Michael Jackson must've been scared to death."
Vietnam Story was followed by a part in the 1989 baseball comedy Major League--he turned down a smaller part in Lee's Do the Right Thing for this role--and later a minor role in the drug warfare film King of New York. Around the same time, Snipes and his wife had a son named Jelani. The couple divorced in 1990. That same year, Snipes portrayed a jazz saxophonist named Shadow Henderson in Lee's Mo' Better Blues, holding his own opposite Academy Award winner Denzel Washington. Snipes told Randolph: ''I just wanted to go in, do a good job, and not let Denzel blow me off the screen." In preparation for his role as a saxophonist, Snipes watched tapes of John Coltrane and other jazz legends and visited a variety of the jazz clubs in New York City. A proficient mimic, Snipes memorized scales and fingering for all of the music played in the film.
An Established Leading Man
The role of Harlem drug baron Nino Brown in the 1991 film, New Jack City, was also written with Snipes in mind after his appearance in the video Bad. Directed by Mario Van Peebles, New Jack City grossed $22.3 million at the box office within its first three weeks--a tribute to the powerful screen presence of Snipes. New Jack City was designed to be an anti-drug and anti-violence gangster film, but a spate of shootings and violence erupted briefly at some theaters across the country after it opened. Some of the eruptions were due to the fact that few theaters were showing the film at first, and those that were sold out quickly, leaving dozens of frustrated people--usually teenagers--outside of the theater without tickets. Rohter noted: ''Indeed, Mr. Snipes now finds himself in the peculiar position of fending off arguments that his portrayal (of drug lord Nino Brown) may have been too effective." Commenting in the Los Angeles Times about the theaters where outbreaks occurred, Snipes asserted: ''They oversold the showings by 1,500 tickets and the theater owners didn't give their money back. The same thing would happen with a Menudo concert, or the Rolling Stones."
Landed Leading Roles
Because of Snipes's outstanding performance as Shadow in Mo' Better Blues, Lee decided to cast him as Flipper Purify in Jungle Fever, a controversial film about interracial romance, and wrote the part with Snipes in mind. Snipes told the New York Times that Lee had said to him on the last day of shooting Mo' Better Blues: ''Be ready for the next one, because I got something great for you." In Jungle Fever, released in June of 1991, Snipes portrayed a married architect having an affair with his white secretary-an affair that ended due to economic and cultural differences between the lovers and their conflicted families. The film was a vehicle for Lee's views on interracial relationships, and Snipes told Hilary De Vries of the Los Angeles Times: ''I don't know if the film is an argument for racial purity. I think it's about how color-conscious this society really is."
Snipes followed Jungle Fever with a leading role in Ron Shelton's 1992 release White Men Can't Jump, a movie about street basketball featuring Snipes and Cheers actor Woody Harrelson as urban hoop hustlers. The on-screen chemistry between the two stars helped make White Men Can't Jump one of the season's top moneymakers, and through his performance, Snipes solidified his place in American film. As he pointed out in Entertainment Weekly, ''Rarely have you seen a young black male in this type of powerful position, who can basically make or break a project."
Following White Men Can't Jump, Snipes began work on Neil Jamenez's The Waterdance, which won several awards at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival. In the film, he portrayed one of a group of hospitalized paraplegics and quadriplegics. To research his role, Snipes spoke with patients at rehabilitation centers to understand their physical limitations and to glean emotional insight as well.
In mid-1992, Snipes appeared in the action/adventure film Passenger 57. The film featured Snipes as a security agent and martial arts expert named John Cutter. Cutter is a passenger on a plane that is hijacked by terrorists, and he uses his skills and intelligence to save his fellow passengers. Stephen Holden of the New York Times critiqued Snipes's performance: "As an action hero, Mr. Snipes belongs to the school that plays it cool and tongue-in-cheek. Consistently underplaying his part, he strolls through the role with a glint in his eye that seems to acknowledge that the movie is really a live-action cartoon."
The following year, Snipes starred in Boiling Point as a U.S. marshal who tracks down a sociopathic con artist. He also starred opposite Sean Connery in a film adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel, Rising Sun. Snipes and Connery play two detectives who are called upon to investigate the murder of a prostitute during the opening of a new skyscraper in Los Angeles. Although reviews of the film were mixed, many critics lauded Snipes's performance. "Snipes, as the bewildered-innocent half of the detective team..., has the trickier role and brings it off flawlessly: his confusion is necessarily comic, but he never seems a buffoon, " remarked Terrence Rafferty of the New Yorker. Also in 1993, Snipes teamed with Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man. As Simon Phoenix, Snipes portrayed a criminal who escapes from prison after being cryogenically frozen for 36 years. In order to recapture Phoenix the authorities turn to John Spartan, a police sergeant who was also cryogenically frozen. The film centers around the battles between Phoenix and Spartan, who is played by Stallone, in the fictional city of San Angeles. Again, Snipes received rave reviews for his performance. John Anderson of New York Newsday remarked: "Snipes, the villain you can't quite bring yourself to hate, turns out to be the kind of natural comedian Stallone will never be."
In 1994 Snipes landed the role of Roemello Skuggs, a drug dealer who seeks an escape from his violent world, in the film Sugar Hill. That same year he starred as Pete Nessip in Drop Zone, a film about a U.S. marshal who enters the world of professional skydiving to destroy a terrorist group and avenge the death of his brother. Along with John Leguizamo and Patrick Swayze, Snipes played a drag queen in the 1995 comedy To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. In the film, the three men portray drag queens who are on their way to a beauty pageant when their car breaks down in a small town. Stranded, the three men become involved in the lives and problems of the town's inhabitants. In 1995, Snipes also played the role of James in the highly acclaimed film adaptation of Terry Mcmillan's novel Waiting to Exhale.
In 1996, Snipes starred in the action thriller The Fan. Snipes appeared in the role of Bobby Rayburn, a star baseball player who is stalked by an overzealous fan, played by Robert DeNiro. The fan becomes psychotic after Rayburn falls into a batting slump, and kidnaps Rayburn's young son. That same year, Snipes narrated and served as the executive producer of the documentary John Henrik Clarke: A Great and Mighty Walk. He also landed the role of George Du Vaul in the movie America's Dream, which aired on HBO.
Snipes maintained a presence on the big screen in 1997. In the film Murder at 1600 Snipes starred as Harlan Regis, a detective who is called upon to investigate a murder at the White House. Critics generally gave the film poor reviews. Although Roger Moore of Journal Now called the premise of the film "preposterous," he noted that Snipes as Harlan Regis is "properly jaded, efficient, and annoyed." Susan Wloszczyna of USA Today remarked that Murder at 1600 is "a fairly diverting game of whodunit, like a big screen version of Clue, until it sinks into routine thriller antics and wraps up preposterously." Snipes also appeared as Max, a successful ad executive who travels from his home in Los Angeles to New York to visit a friend who is dying of AIDS, in the film One Night Stand. While in New York, Max has an affair with a stranger and begins to question the meaning of his life. Although One Night Stand generally received poor reviews, Snipes received a best actor award for his work in the film at the 1997 Venice Film Festival.
In 1998, Snipes teamed with Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Downey Jr. in the action thriller U.S. Marshals. In the film Snipes played the role of Sheridan, a man who is falsely accused of murdering two government agents. As Sheridan tries to clear his name, he is pursued by U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) and his assistant John Royce (Robert Downey, Jr.) The film received mixed reviews. Snipes also appeared in Down in the Delta, a film directed by poet Maya Angelou. The film was produced by Snipes's production company, Amen Ra Films, and aired on Showtime. Snipes also played a half-human, half-vampire who tries to save humanity from a race of vampires in the film Blade. Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post remarked that the film's "stomach-turning special effects, bone-crunching martial arts, and cynical humor will more than satisfy any action-film addict's need for a fix of eye-popping escapist adrenaline." Charles Taylor of Salon Magazine noted that Blade "in no way resembles a good movie, but its combination of music-video bombast, goth-rock sensibility, high-tech industrial production design, cold-blooded glossy magazine visuals, high-fashion club culture, horror movies, blaxploitation movies, Hong Kong movies, and comic-book nihilism make it diverting trash." In addition to his starring role, Snipes was also the producer of Blade.
Through hard work and perseverance, Wesley Snipes has become one of the country's most successful African American actors. However, Hollywood stardom can also lead to enormous pressure. "It's a stressful life," Snipes told Lynn Norment of Ebony, "It has benefits and perks, but it's highly stressful. The more you do and the more money you make, the more stress there is." To cope with the stresses of his daily life, Snipes has developed a deeply-rooted spirituality. As he remarked to Norment, "I think that's the only way I've been able to survive."
Awards
Cable television's ACE Award for best actor for his performance in Vietnam Story; Best Actor award for One Night Stand, Venice Film Festival, 1997.
Further Reading
Periodicals
- Atlanta Constitution, August 7, 1990.
- Boston Globe, June 7, 1991.
- Ebony, November 1997.
- Entertainment Weekly, September 27, 1991; April 10, 1992.
- Journal Now, April 18, 1997.
- Los Angeles Times, April 13, 1991; May 19, 1991; June 29, 1991.
- Newsweek, April 22, 1991; June 10, 1991.
- New York Newsday, October 8, 1993.
- New York Times, August 24, 1990; March 8, 1991; March 27, 1991; June 7, 1991, November 6, 1992.
- New Yorker, July 26, 1993.
- Premiere, July 1991.
- Rolling Stone, August 22, 1991.
- Salon, August 20, 1998.
- USA Today, December 1, 1998.
- Washington Post, June 7, 1991, April 21, 1998.
— B. Kimberly Taylor and David G. Oblender
