Although he was born in Orlando, Florida, Wesley Snipes spent much of his childhood in the South Bronx, New York City. He attended the High School for the Performing Arts and later graduated from the artsy State University of New York at Purchase. Shortly after graduation in 1985, he played a part in Wildcats (1986), which starred GOLDIE HAWN as a high school football coach. The athletic Wesley Snipes, who is adept at the martial arts, went from football to boxing (Streets of Gold, 1986) to baseball (Major League, 1989) and The Fan (1996), in which he played the baseball star stalked by fan ROBERT DE NIRO.
Wesley Snipes first attained a following when he appeared in "Bad," Michael Jackson's 1987 music video; he played a gang leader threatening Jackson. Three years later, he was in King of New York, a film about a drug czar. That same year, director Spike Lee cast him in his Mo' Better Blues. Snipes was the vicious drug lord in Mario Van Peebles's New Jack City in 1991.
At this point in his career, Wesley Snipes had appeared only as athletes or gangsters, but Spike Lee gave him an entirely different role in Jungle Fever (1991), in which he is a middleclass architect who is romantically involved with a white woman. His first comedy, White Men Can't Jump (1992), a basketball story with Woody Harrelson, took him back to the world of athletics but also gave him the chance to showcase his comedic talents. In The Waterdance (1992), he went in a different direction, playing a paraplegic.
His first real action film was Passenger 57 (1993), in which he demonstrated his martial-arts prowess, and that same year, he was in a buddy action film with SEAN CONNERY: Rising Sun, about contrasting Japanese and American corporate styles. Martial arts were featured again in 1993's Demolition Man, in which Wesley Snipes played a science-fiction villain out to get SYLVESTER STALLONE. Snipes was nominated for a Best Villain Award by MTV. It was back to Harlem with Sugar Hill (1994), but in 1995, he was cast against type as a drag queen in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.
When he and Woody Harrelson were reunited in Money Train (1995), the chemistry between the two couldn't save the film, but Wesley Snipes received a Best Actor Award at the Venice Film Festival for his role in One Night Stand (1997), though the film did not fare well at the box office. It was not until U.S. Marshals (1998), when he was teamed with Tommy Lee Jones, that Snipes got back on track (the film grossed $57 million).
The pair were so good together that they were nominated for a Favorite Duo Award by Blockbuster Entertainment. That same year, Wesley Snipes starred in and produced the film adaptation of Maya Angelou's Down in the Delta and starred in the blockbuster hit Blade ($70 million), in which he played a black superhero taking on an assortment of vampires. Success breeds sequels; Blade II (2002) was another hit ($81 million).
Wesley Snipes continued to kick butt in the movies and at the box office with The Art of War (2000), impressing some critics who thought that he had managed to combine the James Bond persona with Shaft. Submerged in a swamp of stereotypes, Snipes made this B-movie potboiler successful to the tune of $30 million.
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