BIO: Forest Whitaker

Forest Steven Whitaker was born in East Texas 46 years ago to Forest Whitaker Jr, an insurance salesman and Laura Francis Smith, a teacher. Whitaker is the second of four children and was born with a condition called strabismus, often incorrectly referred to as 'lazy eye'. His two younger brothers Kenn and Damon Whitaker are both prominent actors in their own right.

When he was still a toddler, Forest and his family moved to Los Angeles. It was here that his career as an American football player began. In high school he played defensive tackle on the school team, which was quarterbacked by Jay Schroeder, a future NFL player.

It was through a football scholarship that Whitaker initially made his way into college. Later, after a serious back injury, he was forced to leave.

Whitaker’s new direction of choice was music. He was accepted by the University of Southern California to study opera as a tenor. It was here that Whitaker started to explore drama. After he graduated in 1982 Whitaker got serious about his acting and accepted a scholarship from Berkeley to study drama.

Making ends meet through these years wasn’t easy. Whitaker had to take a job as an unlicensed taxi driver, often driving drunks home from The Harp Club to pay the rent.

Whitaker’s break came when his first agent discovered him singing in a production of ”The Beggar's Opera”. It was not long before Whitaker made his mark. His first screen role was in 1982, playing a footballer in the comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High. This was no average film debut; Whitaker shared the set with acting greats such as Nicolas Cage, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Sean Penn.

Gaining experience on television and film, Forest Whitaker soon moved on to star in high profile films like Platoon, Good Morning, Vietnam, and The Colour of Money.

He first started raking in awards in 1988, when he won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his role as Charlie Parker in Clint Eastwood’s, Bird.

Whitaker has inhabited many diverse roles since then. He has been a British soldier in The Crying Game, a gay clothing designer in Prêt-à-Porter, an empathetic alien hunter in Species and a Mafia hitman in Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.

In the 1990's Whitaker moved behind the camera to try his hand at producing and directing. His first project was A Rage in Harlem in 1991 in which he co-starred and co-produced. In 2002, he executive produced the Emmy-award winning made-for-television movie, Door to Door, starring William H. Macy.

His directorial debut was the soulful hit Waiting to Exhale in 1995. Since then he has directed a music video for Whitney Houston’s song “Shoop Shoop” and the romantic comedy, First Daughter, starring Katie Holmes.

Flourishing in Hollywood, Whitaker’s personal life did not take a back seat. In 1996, he was married to fellow actress, Keisha Whitaker. Today, they have two children, Sonnet and True. Whitaker also has a third child from a previous relationship, a boy named, Ocean.

In Whitaker’s latest film, The Last King of Scotland he proves that acting is what he does best. In the film he moves away from the timid “gentle giant” image for which he is so well known and transforms himself into the brutal Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin.

Whitaker almost did not get the part because director Kevin MacDonald thought he is just too ‘nice a guy’ to play the part of Idi Amin. "I loved his work and I adored him, but he's a very soft-spoken, modest man," MacDonald said.

In the end, Whitaker, a vegetarian, was so believable as the cannibalistic tyrant he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his role as Idi Amin. In January 2007 he also won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor and was nominated for an Academy Award.

Trivia
Whitaker has a Black Belt in Karate.

He recently opened a raw food/vegan restaurant in West Los Angeles called Taste of the Goddess.

Whitaker was asked to direct the live-action film version of Fat Albert but disagreed with Bill Cosby and left the production.

His wife has a daughter from a previous relationship, named Autumn.

Whitaker was originally cast in the role of “Sawyer" on Lost , but opted out of the role when 20th Century Fox gave the go ahead for First Daughter .

Whitaker is the brother-in-law of Jeffrey Nash, Kidada Jones, Rashida Jones and Quincy Jones III.

In 2003, Whitaker became Executive Director of the Nodance Film Festival, a festival that celebrates the alternative digital film culture with an emphasis on first-time filmmakers and digital filmmaking.

He tried to be as bulky as possible to play Big Harold in Platoon , but the vigorous boot-camping training, bad food and rough shoot caused him to lose a lot of weight. When he noticed Whitaker was getting thinner, Oliver Stone said to him, "What are you doing? You're supposed to be 'Big' Harold".

Quotes:
“I'm an actor. And I guess I've done so many movies I've achieved some high visibility. But a star? I guess I still think of myself as kind of a worker ant.”

“I used to take showers, just trying to get the guy to leave me. I needed to wash those darker passions away.” (Forest on how powerful his method acting was in The Last King of Scotland)

“I'm not trying to defend him, the Amin I found was not a good man.” (Forest on accusations that he had made Ugandan dictator Amin appear too sympathetic)

"I don't know if I'm always grounded, but I try to keep my centre."

"I feel like I just really kind of moved into a space where my work is going to be — maybe what it should be. I think my best work is about to happen."

"I wasn't thinking, 'Let me humanize him’. What I was thinking was, 'Let me find out his passions, let me find out his loves, let me find out his pains, let me find out his hates. Once you start to define those things, the person becomes human. People loved him. He had a great sense of humour; he was very charismatic. That's how he rose to where he was. Whether or not some of the deeds are atrocities, that's another question. I mean, look, maybe 300,000 people were killed, you know, the number is 50,000 to 300,000 — even if you just went to 50,000, that's an unimaginable amount of people." (Whitaker on playing Idi Amin)

Selected filmography:
The Air I Breathe (2007)
The Shield (2006)
The Last King of Scotland (2006)
A Little Trip to Heaven (2005)
American Gun (2005)
Phone Booth (2002)
Panic Room (2002)
Battlefield Earth (2000)
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
Species (1995)
The Enemy Within (1994)
The Crying Game (1992)
Bird (1988)
Bloodsport (1988)
Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
Platoon (1986)
The Colour of Money (1986)
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

- Annel Malan