Wesley Snipes

Wesley Snipes first came to national attention as an actor during the early 1990s, and followed that with a prolific decade of work in which he proved himself to be among the most versatile and popular leading men in Hollywood, qualities he continued to demonstrate as his career moved into the 21st century. Though his athletic prowess made him an ideal action hero in films like "Blade" (1997) and its two sequels, he was also a skilled dramatic actor in films like "New Jack City" (1991), "Jungle Fever" (1991), "The Waterdance" (1992), and "One Night Stand" (1997), which earned him the top acting award at the Venice Film Festival. Snipes was equally adept at comedy, most notably in "White Men Can't Jump" (1992), and could transition gracefully from larger-than-life characters like his futuristic villain in "Demolition Man" (1993) to subtler parts like his uncredited turn as a smooth-talking bar patron in "Waiting to Exhale" (1995). Other highlights of Snipes' career included such projects as "U.S. Marshals" (1998) and "Chaos" (2005), as well as "Expendables 3" (2014) and "Chi-raq" (2015), the latter of which he also produced. He also took on his first regular TV role when he was cast as Mr. Johnson in the NBC crime drama "The Player" (2015). In this and other projects, Snipes continued to turn in the thoughtful, detailed character work that had distinguished his career from the beginning.