Laurence Fishburne

Laurence John Fishburne III was born on July 30, 1961, in Augusta, Georgia, to Hattie Bell Crawford, a junior high school mathematics and science teacher, and Laurence John Fishburne, Jr., a juvenile corrections officer. After his parents divorced during his childhood, he relocated with his mother to Brooklyn, New York, where he was raised. His father visited once a month. Fishburne is a graduate of Lincoln Square Academy in New York, which closed in the 1980s. In his forties, he learned that Laurence John Fishburne, Jr. was not his biological father, and in 2025, an episode of Finding Your Roots revealed that his biological father was William Seigel Bohannan, a member of the U.S. military stationed at Fort Gordon who had met Fishburne's mother when she was a USO volunteer.

Fishburne began his acting career at the age of eleven, earning positive reviews for his role in the 1972 ABC Theater teleplay If You Give a Dance You Gotta Pay the Band. He subsequently portrayed Joshua Hall on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live and appeared in Cornbread, Earl and Me as a young boy who witnesses the police shooting of a high school basketball star. He went on to earn a supporting role in Apocalypse Now, playing Tyrone Miller, a cocky Gunner's Mate 3rd Class from the Bronx nicknamed Mr. Clean. Production began in March 1976, when Fishburne was fourteen — he had lied about his age to secure the part — and filming extended long enough that he was seventeen by its completion. For much of his early career he was credited as Larry Fishburne.

During the 1980s, Fishburne moved between television, film, and stage work. He appeared in Death Wish 2, The Cotton Club, and Band of the Hand, and had a minor role in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985). He played a hospital orderly in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), appeared alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Belushi in Red Heat (1988), and starred as Dap in Spike Lee's School Daze (1988). On television, he held a recurring role as Cowboy Curtis on Paul Reubens' CBS children's series Pee-wee's Playhouse from 1986 to 1990. His stage work during the decade included Short Eyes (1984) and Loose Ends (1987), both produced at Second Stage Theatre in New York City.

Fishburne's Broadway career spans 1992 to 2022. His first Broadway credit was August Wilson's Two Trains Running in 1992, a performance that earned him both a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play. He returned to Broadway in American Buffalo and The Lion in Winter, and in April 2008 appeared in Thurgood, a solo performance for which he received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance. His Broadway work continued through 2022.

The early 1990s brought Fishburne significant screen recognition. He starred in Boyz n the Hood (1991) and Deep Cover (1992) alongside Jeff Goldblum, and in 1993 received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of Ike Turner in What's Love Got to Do with It. He also won an Emmy Award in 1992 for his performance in the opening episode of the anthology drama TriBeCa. In 1995, he wrote, directed, and starred in the Off-Broadway play Riff-Raff at Circle Rep Theater, with a cast that included Titus Welliver and Heavy D. That same year he starred in Higher Learning, winning an Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture for his role as Professor Maurice Phipps. He also played the title role in Othello, becoming only the second African-American actor after Paul Robeson to perform the role on that stage.

Fishburne achieved global recognition with his portrayal of Morpheus in the 1999 science fiction film The Matrix, and reprised the role in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, both released in 2003. Additional film credits include Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), Event Horizon (1997), Mystic River (2003), Akeelah and the Bee (2006), Mission: Impossible III (2006), Predators (2010), Contagion (2011), Man of Steel (2013), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), and The Mule (2018). He also voiced Thrax in Osmosis Jones (2001) and the Silver Surfer in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007).

On television, Fishburne starred in the CBS crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation from 2008 to 2011, portrayed Jack Crawford in the NBC thriller Hannibal from 2013 to 2015, and played Earl "Pops" Johnson in the ABC sitcom Black-ish from 2014 to 2022. He has won six Emmy Awards across various television projects and received nominations for a Golden Globe Award and five Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2006, he appeared onstage with Angela Bassett in a Pasadena Playhouse production of August Wilson's Fences. Fishburne also serves as a UNICEF ambassador and was honored with the Harvard Foundation's Artist of the Year award on February 24, 2007.