Forest Whitaker
Born: 15th July 1961
Where: Longview, Texas, USA
The onetime athlete and opera tenor first came to the attention of British audiences as the captured British soldier in Neil Jordan's IRA thriller The Crying Game.
Other notable roles have included Charlie "Bird" Parker in the jazz biopic Bird and the part of Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.
He originally started college on an athletic scholarship, but soon dropped football, studying first to become a classical tenor before shifting to acting.
After playing high school athletes in a few ambitious teen flicks like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Vision Quest, Whitaker gained notice in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money.
Feature supporting roles followed in films like Platoon, Stakeout and Good Morning, Vietnam, in which he shone as Robin Williams's sidekick, a likable big man too timid for his own body.
Whitaker graduated to leading man status under the direction of Clint Eastwood for the biopic Bird, earning Best Actor honours at the Cannes Film Festival.
Throughout the 90s, he appeared in Diary of a Hitman, The Crying Game, Pret-a-Porter and Phenomenon as well as making his directing debut with Waiting to Exhale starring Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett.
Deluged with offers to direct, Whitaker remained a familiar face on screen while pondering his filmmaking future, segueing effortlessly from Hollywood genre fare, both big-budget like Blown Away and small like Body Snatchers.
In 1998 he was back in the director's chair for Hope Floats then returned in front of the screen for the action thriller The Fourth Angel.
In 2002, he played a police officer in the real-time thriller Phone Booth with Colin Farrell and was also a burglar in David Fincher's Panic Room.
Switching back to directing, he helmed the light romantic First Daughter in 2004 with Katie Holmes and Michael Keaton.
In 2006, he starred in episodes of TV series The Shield and attracted critical acclaim for his portrayal of Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin in Kevin MacDonald's The Last King of Scotland.
