Forest Pack Lite 4.0.3 With Crack
Deidamia Bassiti
Forest Steven Whitaker (born July 15, 1961) is an American actor, producer and director. He is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a British Academy Film Award, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
He made his Broadway debut in the revival of Eugene O'Neill's Hughie (2016). Apart from his acting career, Whitaker is also known for his humanitarian work and activism. In 2011, he was inducted as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, later receiving a promotion to Special Envoy for Peace and Reconciliation, and serves as the CEO of Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative (WPDI), a non-profit outreach program.[4]
Forest Steven Whitaker was born on July 15, 1961, in Longview, Texas,[5] the son of Laura Francis (ne Smith), a special education teacher and Forest E. Whitaker Jr., an insurance salesman.[6][7] A DNA test has shown that his mother had Akan ancestry, while his father was of Igbo descent.[8] When Whitaker was in elementary school, his family moved to Carson, California.[9] He has two younger brothers and an older sister. His first role as an actor was the lead in Dylan Thomas's play Under Milk Wood.[9]
Whitaker 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,[10] but a back injury made him change his major to music (singing). He toured England with the Cal Poly Chamber Singers in 1980. While still at Cal Poly, he briefly changed his major to drama. He later transferred to the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California to study opera as a tenor and was subsequently accepted into the university's Drama Conservatory.[7] He graduated from USC with a BFA in acting in 1982.[11] He then took a course at Drama Studio London at its now defunct California branch.[12] 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.[13]
Whitaker has a long history of working with well-regarded film directors and actors. In his first onscreen performance of note, he had a supporting role playing a high school football player in the 1982 film version of Cameron Crowe's coming-of-age teen-retrospective Fast Times at Ridgemont High.[7] In 1986, he appeared in Martin Scorsese's sports drama The Color of Money and Oliver Stone's Vietnam War drama film Platoon. The following year, he co-starred in the comedy Good Morning, Vietnam alongside Robin Williams.
After completing several films in the early 1980s, Whitaker gained additional roles in multiple television shows. On the series Diff'rent Strokes, he played a bully in the 1985 episode "Bully for Arnold".[14] That same year, Whitaker also played the part of a comic book salesman in the Amazing Stories episode "Gather Ye Acorns".[15] He appeared in the first and second parts of North and South in 1985 and 1986. Throughout the 1990s, Whitaker mainly had roles in television films which aired on HBO, including Criminal Justice, The Enemy Within, and Witness Protection.
In 1988, Whitaker appeared in the film Bloodsport and had his first lead role starring as jazz alto saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker in Clint Eastwood's Bird. To prepare himself for the part, Whitaker took saxophone lessons and sequestered himself in a loft with only a bed, couch, and an alto saxophone,[1] having also conducted extensive research and talked to numerous people who knew Parker.[16] His performance, which has been called "transcendent",[3] earned him the Best Actor award at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival[17] and a Golden Globe nomination.
Whitaker next appeared in what has been called one of the worst films ever made,[25] the 2000 production of Battlefield Earth, based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard. The film was widely criticized as a notorious commercial and critical disaster.[25][26] However, Whitaker's performance was lauded by the film's director, Roger Christian, who commented that, "Everybody's going to be very surprised" by Whitaker, who "found this huge voice and laugh."[27] Battlefield Earth won seven Razzie Awards.[28] Whitaker later expressed his regret for participating in the film.[29]
In 2001, Whitaker had a small, uncredited role in the Wong Kar-wai-directed The Follow, one of five short films produced by BMW that year to promote its cars.[30] He co-starred in Joel Schumacher's 2002 thriller Phone Booth with Kiefer Sutherland and Colin Farrell. That year, he also co-starred with Jodie Foster in Panic Room. His performance as the film's "bad guy" was described as "a subtle chemistry of aggression and empathy".[9] In the fall of 2006, Whitaker started a multi-episode story arc on ER as Curtis Ames, a man who comes into the ER with a cough, but quickly faces the long-term consequences of a paralyzing stroke; he sues, then takes out his anger on Dr. Luka Kovač, who he blames for the strokes. Whitaker received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his performance in the series.[31] Also in 2006, Whitaker appeared in T.I.'s music video "Live in the Sky" alongside Jamie Foxx.[32]
Whitaker's 2006 portrayal of Idi Amin in the film The Last King of Scotland earned him positive reviews by critics as well as multiple awards and honors.[33][34] To portray the dictator, Whitaker gained 50 pounds, learned to play the accordion, and immersed himself in research.[35] He read books about Amin, watched news and documentary footage featuring Amin, and spent time in Uganda meeting with Amin's friends, relatives, generals, and victims; he also learned Swahili and mastered Amin's East African accent.[1] His performance earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor, making him the fourth black actor in history to do so, joining the ranks of Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, and Jamie Foxx.[36] In his acceptance speech, Whitaker said: "When I first started acting, it was because of my desire to connect to everyone, to that thing inside each of us, that light that I believe exists in all of us. Because acting for me is about believing in that connection; and it's a connection so strong, it's a connection so deep that we feel it and through our combined belief we can create a new reality."[37] For that same role, he was also recognized with the British Academy Film Award, Golden Globe Award, National Board of Review Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and accolades from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, London Film Critics' Circle Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Society of Film Critics, and New York Film Critics Circle among others. It's the only performance to have swept these awards.[38]
In 2007, Whitaker played Dr. James Farmer Sr. in The Great Debaters, for which he received an Image Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor.[39] In 2008, Whitaker appeared in three films, first as a business man known only as Happiness, who likes butterflies, in the film The Air I Breathe. He also portrayed a rogue police captain in Street Kings, and a heroic tourist in Vantage Point. Whitaker was cast in the Criminal Minds spin-off Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, that was subsequently cancelled by CBS on May 17, 2011.[40] Under Frank Cooper, he served as the creator and producer of DEWmocracy.com, an interactive video game, short film, and website that allowed people to select a new flavor of Mountain Dew. This campaign turned into the most successful launch of a soft drink in Mountain Dew's history.[41] Whitaker appears in the Jamie Foxx featuring T-Pain 2008 music video "Blame It".[42]
In 2013, after a small career slump where he starred in a few straight-to-video films, Whitaker has enjoyed a career resurgence, having played the lead role in Lee Daniels' The Butler, which has become one of his greatest critical and commercial successes to date. Whitaker won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture for that film as well as nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.[43][44] Whitaker also starred in the film Black Nativity and co-starred in 2013's The Last Stand, playing an FBI agent chasing an escaped drug cartel leader.
Whitaker played Saw Gerrera in the 2016 film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.[45][46] In December 2016, it was announced that Whitaker would reprise his role as Saw Gerrera from Rogue One for the Star Wars Rebels animated series.[47] That same year he made his Broadway debut in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's play Hughie at the Booth Theatre, directed by Michael Grandage.[48] David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter wrote of Whitaker's performance, "With his sleepy eyes, soulful voice and fluttering hands, Whitaker is a superb actor who can wear sorrow like a baggy overcoat".[49]
Whitaker portrayed Colonel Weber in the science fiction drama film Arrival (2016) and portrayed Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 2017's The Forgiven. In 2017 and 2018, Whitaker had an eleven-episode arc on Empire, which saw him reunited with Lee Daniels after their work together on The Butler. For his portrayal of Zuri in the Ryan Coogler directed Marvel Cinematic Universe action adventure film Black Panther (2018), Whitaker shared in winning the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.[50]
Whitaker's voice and likeness were used for Saw Gerrera in the 2019 video game Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order. Since 2019, Whitaker has been starring as Bumpy Johnson in Godfather of Harlem, a series on EPIX which explores the intersection between the criminal underworld and civil rights movement in the 1960s.[51] In 2020, Whitaker starred as Jeronicus Jangle in the Netflix Christmas musical Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey.[52] He appeared as Reverend C. L. Franklin, the father of Aretha Franklin (played by Jennifer Hudson) in the film Respect,[53] and is set to appear alongside Tom Hardy in Havoc.[54] In 2023, Whitaker will portray boxing trainer Doc Broadus in Big George Foreman.[55] Whitaker is set to appear in an episode of Extrapolations, an Apple TV anthology series that focuses on climate change.[56] He joined Francis Ford Coppola's upcoming project Megalopolis.
b37509886e