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| Birth Name(s) : Wesley Snipes |
Date of Birth: July 31, 1962 |
| Status:
N/A
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| Profession:
Actor |
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Full Wesley Snipes Biography
Wesley Snipes grew up on the streets of the South Bronx in New York City, where he very early decided that the theater was to be his career. He attended the High School for the Performing Arts (popularized in Fame (1980)). But dreams of the musical theater (and maybe a few commercials) faded when his mother moved to Orlando, Florida before he could graduate from high school. But after graduation from a Florida high school he appeared in local dinner theaters and regional productions. An agent saw him in a competition and got him his first movie role with Goldie Hawn in Wildcats (1986).
Athletic roles such as that gave way to tough guy roles as in New Jack City (1991), and to the action hero in Passenger 57 (1992). Wesley feels that at least with the Hollywood heavyweights he must be doing something right - Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro, Dennis Hopper and Sean Connery all had veto power over casting and all approved his role. |
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Additional Wesley Snipes Biography
Wesley Trent Snipes (born July 31, 1962) is an American actor, martial artist and film producer. He may be best known for his role as the vampire hunter in the eponymous Blade trilogy films.
Snipes has starred in action-adventures, thrillers, comedies, and dramatic feature films opposite such actors as Robert De Niro and Sean Connery. In recent years, Snipes has moved behind the scenes in order to make his own films. To this end, he formed his own independent production company, Amen Ra Films, and its subsidiary Black Dot Media in 1991, to develop projects for film and television.
Snipes was arrested on December 8, 2006 at Orlando International Airport. An arrest warrant had been issued for him on October 17, 2006, in a case alleging that he filed fraudulent claims for tax refunds. He pleaded not guilty and was released on $1 million bond.
In 1987, Snipes appeared as Michael Jackson's rival gang leader in the Martin Scorsese-directed music video "Bad" (he is only seen in the long version of the video) and the feature film Streets of Gold, which brought him to the attention of director Spike Lee. He turned down a small role in Lee's Do the Right Thing for the larger part of Willie Mays Hays in Major League, beginning a succession of box-office hits for Snipes. Lee would later cast Snipes as the jazz saxophonist Shadow Handerson in Mo' Better Blues and as the lead in the interracial romance drama Jungle Fever. Another important role for Snipes was the drug lord Nino Brown in New Jack City, which was written specifically for him by Barry Michael Cooper. Another film in which his character was involved in drugs was the somber movie Sugar Hill.
In 1997 he won the Best Actor Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival for his performance in New Line Cinema's One Night Stand. Snipes was also lauded by critics worldwide for his performance in U.S. Marshals, a sequel of sorts to the box-office hit, The Fugitive.
1998 was especially rewarding for Snipes with the opening of the year's hit Blade, for New Line Cinema, which has grossed over $150 million worldwide. He was also honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, SUNY/Purchase, for his outstanding achievements in film.
Snipes produced The Big Hit, starring Mark Wahlberg and executive produced by John Woo and Terrence Chang, and the critically acclaimed feature Down in the Delta, which marked Maya Angelou's directorial debut and garnered several awards including a Christopher Prism and nominations in multiple categories for the Acapulco Black Film Festival, as well as an NAACP Image Award for Best Motion Picture.
Additionally, television projects distinguished Snipes as a creative force with ABC's Futuresport, in which he starred with Dean Cain and Vanessa L. Williams. Snipes also produced the highest rated cable special of all time, TNT's "The First Tribute to the Martial Arts Masters of the 20th Century," which showcased some of the greatest innovators of the martial arts.
Snipes's last film to have a US theatrical release was 2004's Blade Trinity. Although the film was a box office success, Wesley was forced to devote his time to making several direct-to-video films. He recently completed filming The Shooter (also know as "The Contractor") in Bulgaria and the UK, with Charles Dance, Lena Heady and Eliza Bennett.
Snipes also served as executive producer of a series of documentaries that he personally financed through now defunct Black Dot Media. The company showcased prominent thinkers from the African and Afro-Caribbean culture. The first in the series, John Henrik Clarke: A Great and Mighty Walk, chronicled the life of John Henrik Clarke, an authority on African and Afro-Caribbean studies. The film won critical acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997 and won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Urbanworld Film Festival in New York.
On October 17, 2006, an arrest warrant was issued for Wesley Snipes on the tax charges. He was taken into custody on December 8, 2006, after arriving at Orlando International Airport and surrendering to authorities. Later that day he pleaded not guilty and was released on a US$1 million bond.
Due to the volume of evidence being reviewed (including over 800,000 pages of documents by the government) and schedule conflicts for the attorneys, the trial (originally set for March 5, 2007) in the United States District Court in Ocala, Florida was continued (i.e., postponed). The trial is now set to begin in January of 2008.
Snipes said he was a scapegoat and unfairly targeted by prosecutors in connection with the federal tax fraud investigation. If convicted, Snipes could face up to sixteen years in prison and substantial fines. |
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| Lot of the scripts I've been in with other non-white actors haven't been great. Lot of non-white actors ain't all that great. |
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