Laurence Fishburne biography
Laurence Fishburne biography
Laurence Fishburne (Laurence J. Fishburne III) was born on July 30, 1961, in Augusta, Georgia, USA.
He moved with his mother to New York after his parents divorced. With a background in the theater, he already got to play in a soap opera in 1973.
It led to a role as a very young soldier in Francis Ford Coppola's great Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now (1979), several appearances in television series, and further participation in Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish (1983) and Cotton Club (1984) as well as Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985) based on Alice Walker's novel.
In the following years, Laurence Fishburne played a host of roles, both major and minor, on television and in film, while continuing to appear in the theatre before making a significant breakthrough in John Singleton's (1968-2019) ghetto portrayal of Boyz n the Hood (1991). It was set aside for substantial roles in, among other things, The Tina Turner portrait What's Love Got to Do with It (1993), where he was nominated for an Oscar for the role of the tyrannical husband, Ike Turner (1931-2007), Othello (1995) after William Shakespeare and the thriller Just Cause (1995).
With his portrayal of the father figure Morpheus in the Wachowski brothers' popular science fiction trilogy, The Matrix (1999), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), and The Matrix Revolutions (2003), Laurence Fishburne cemented his position as one of Hollywood's charismatic mainstays.
He has since played in i.a. Clint Eastwood's drama Mystic River (2003), the action thriller Mission: Impossible III (2006), Five Fingers (2006), Standoff (2016), and Running with the Devil (2019).
Fishburne also had the leading role from 2008-11 in the popular television crime series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
last updated October 2022
