Jeffrey Wright mini-bio: Jeffrey Wright is a Tony Award-winning American film and stage actor. Wright was born in Washington, D.C. and graduated from St. Albans School for Boys. Amherst College with a bachelor's degree in political science, planning to continue on to law school; however, he decided to study acting instead. After receiving an acting scholarship from New York University and attending the school for two months, he decided to leave and become a full time actor. He began appearing off-Broadway in New York City and Washington, D.C., and in 1990 appeared in his first major film as an attorney in Presumed Innocent, which starred Harrison Ford. In 2004, Wright received an honorary degree from his alma mater Amherst College.
In 1991, Wright joined John Houseman's national touring repertory company The Acting Company with productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Athol Fugard's Blood Knot. Wright continued with his stage performances and in 1994 was cast as Norman 'Belize' Arriaga in Tony Kushner's award-winning play Angels in America. His portrayal of a gay nurse forced to take care of a homophobic Roy Cohn as he lay dying from AIDS won him the Tony Award.
In 1996, Wright had another breakthrough performance on the big screen, portraying painter Jean-Michel Basquiat in the film Basquiat. The film depicts the real-life tribulations of a young black artist who gained tremendous success in the white-dominated New York art scene until he died at the age of 27. Wright's performance was again critically acclaimed and the movie gave him the chance to work alongside veterans such as Gary Oldman, Willem Dafoe, Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken.
Throughout the '90s and early 2000s Wright gave memorable performances in both leading and supporting roles. His more mentionable roles were in movies such as Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998), Shaft (2000), and Boycott (2001), where he gave another critically acclaimed performance as Martin Luther King, Jr. and was awarded the AFI Award for his portrayal. In 2003 Wright reprised his role as Norman 'Belize' Arriaga in HBO's award-winning adaptation of Angels in America starring alongside screen veterans Al Pacino, Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep and directed by Mike Nichols. His performance garnered him an Emmy award as well as a Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actor in a Miniseries. In 2004, he appeared in Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate opposite Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, and Liev Schreiber. In February 2005, Wright returned to HBO Films in his friend George C. Wolfe's directorial debut, Lackawanna Blues, which starred many notable African-American actors. He also guest starred on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and Homicide: Life on the Street.
His most notable film role was as the Washington attorney Bennett Holiday in Stephen Gaghan's Syriana (2005), where he was the co-lead along with George Clooney and Matt Damon.
In 2005, he starred in the play This Is How It Goes, along side Ben Stiller and Amanda Peet. In 2006, Wright appeared as one of the tenants in Lady in the Water and as Felix Leiter in the 21st James Bond movie Casino Royale. This makes him the first African-American man to play the character in an official Bond film (Bernie Casey played Leiter in the unofficial Never Say Never Again).
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