Whitaker has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Bird, The Crying Game, Platoon, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, The Great Debaters, The Butler, and Arrival. He has also appeared in blockbusters such as Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as Saw Gerrera and Black Panther as Zuri. For his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland, Whitaker won the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award.
About Forest Whitaker in brief
Forest Steven Whitaker was born on July 15, 1961, in Longview, Texas. Whitaker has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Bird, The Crying Game, Platoon, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, The Great Debaters, The Butler, and Arrival. He has also appeared in blockbusters such as Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as Saw Gerrera and Black Panther as Zuri. For his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland, Whitaker won the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, National Board of Review Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and various critics groups’ awards for a lead acting performance. He is also an advocate of Sustainable Development Goals appointed by Secretary-general of the United Nations. A DNA test has shown that his mother had Akan ancestry, while his father was of Igbo descent. His first role as an actor was the lead in Dylan Thomas’ play Under Milk Wood. He attended Palisades Charter High School, where he played on the football team and sang in the choir, graduating in 1979. He entered California State Polytechnic University, Pomona on a football scholarship, but a back injury made him change his major to music. He toured England with the Cal Poly Chamber Singers in 1980. He appeared in Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money and Oliver Stone’s Platoon.
In 1996, he played the good-natured man Phenomenon in Wayne Auster’s Smoke, alongside John Travolta and Robert Duvall, which earned him a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for a Supporting Actor – Favorite Actor – Motion Picture. In 1999 he played a serene, pigeon-raising, mob-following man in Ghost Dog. In a similar manner to his role for Bird, he immersed himself in his character’s world in a loft with only a bed, couch, and saxophone. He was pursuing a degree in The Core of Conflict: Studies in Peace and Reconciliation at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2004. He graduated from USC with a BFA in acting in 1982. He starred in the 1990 film Downtown and was cast in the pivotal role of Jody, a captive British soldier in the 1992 film The Cryed Game, for which he used an English accent. In 1988, he appeared in the film Bloodsport and had his first lead role starring as musician Charlie \”Bird\” Parker in Clint Eastwood’s Bird. His performance, which has been called ‘transcendent’, earned him the Best Actor award at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Globe nomination. He co-starred in the comedy Good Morning, Vietnam alongside Robin Williams. He was a member of the cast that won the first ever National Board Of Review Award for Best Acting by an Ensemble for Robert Altman’s film, Prêt-à-Porter, in 1994.
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