Mario Van Peebles
Born: January 1957
Where: Mexico City, Mexico
There's not many actors with the gravitas and nerve to portray seminal black leader Malcolm X...but Mario Van Peebles pulled off the stunt in boxing biopic Ali.
The son of black writer/director/producer Melvin Van Peebles, he made his first film appearance...as a naked 10-year-old atop an equally unclothed adult woman in 1971's Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.
He subsequently avoided the spotlight and graduated from Columbia University with a degree in economics.
Staying outside the acting industry, he set up limited partnerships for a film investment firm, working on Wall Street and serving two years as a budget analyst for New York Mayor Edward Koch.
Van Peebles' good looks earned him assignments as a Ford model and, by the mid-1980s, he had starred in the films South Bronx Heroes and Exterminator 2.
The affable actor's breakthrough feature supporting role came in Clint Eastwood's Heartbreak Ridge where he played a glib and sassy Marine opposite the leathery star.
He went on to associate produce, script and star in the poorly received farce Identity Crisis under his father's direction, playing a white gay designer whose spirit is trapped in the body of a young black rapper.
He graduated to helming features with New Jack City, a movie which gave a breakthrough role to Wesley Snipes as a vicious drug kingpin.
Van Peebles also helmed the largely black Western Posse and teamed with his father to produce the elder Van Peebles' adaptation of his unpublished novel Panther.
In addition to appearing in his own projects, Van Peebles has remained busy as an actor starring in low to medium-budget actioners including two opposite Christopher Lambert - Gunmen and Highlander: The Final Dimension.
In 2001, he played Malcolm X in Will Smith's Ali and also starred in the Jewish comedy The Hebrew Hammer.
Recent work includes Baadasssss! - his re-telling of the making of Blaxploitation movie Sweet Sweetback Baadaasssss! Song in which he starred and directed.
