Overview
Bokeem Woodbine (born April 13, 1973) is an American actor. In 1994, he portrayed Joshua, Jason's troubled brother, in Jason's Lyric. He won a Black Reel Award and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Critics' Choice Television Award for his role as Kansas City mob enforcer Mike Milligan in the second season of Fargo. Woodbine also portrayed Daniel in season 2 of the WGN series Underground and Herman Schultz/Shocker in the film Spider-Man: Homecoming. He is also well known for portraying saxophonist David "Fathead" Newman in the Oscar-winning Ray Charles biopic Ray.
Early life and education
Woodbine was born on April 13, 1973, in Harlem, New York. He attended the Dalton School on Manhattan's Upper East Side, before transferring to the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in the city. He is a lifelong martial arts practitioner having studied Hapkido and Shaolin Kung-Fu.
Career
He made his TV acting debut in the CBS Schoolbreak Special entitled "Love Off Limits". His appearance was noticed by casting director Jaki Brown-Karman, who later recommended him to Forest Whitaker for the latter's directorial effort, the HBO television movie Strapped (1993). Since then, he has worked with other major African-American filmmakers such as Spike Lee, Mario Van Peebles and the Hughes Brothers in the films Crooklyn (1994), Panther (1995) and Dead Presidents (1995), respectively.
In 1996, he appeared in Shakur's music video for "I Ain't Mad at Cha" and formed a friendship with the rapper. They subsequently reunited in Vondie Curtis-Hall's directorial debut, Gridlock'd, which was released four months after Shakur's death. In 1999, Woodbine appeared in an episode of HBO's The Sopranos as New Jersey Gangster rapper Massive Genius.
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