Laurence Fishburne Pictures
Critically hailed for his forceful, militant, authoritarian roles, Laurence Fishburne, who is sometimes mistaken for another tall, gap-toothed, mercurial, immensely talented African-American actor, Samuel L. Jackson, came out of the black theater in New York. Born in Augusta, Georgia, on July 30, 1961, Laurence's mother, who taught high school math, transplanted her family to Brooklyn after his parents divorced. At the age of 10, he appeared in his first play, "In My Many Names and Days," at a cramped little theater space in Manhattan. He continued on but managed to avoid the trappings of a child star per se, considering himself more a working child actor at the time. Billing himself as Larry Fishburne during this early phase, he never studied or was trained in the technique of acting. In 1973, at the age of 12, Laurence won a recurring role on the daytime soap "One Life to Live" (1968) that lasted three seasons and subsequently made his film debut in the ghetto...