
Starting out at 10-years-old on the soap opera One Life to Live, Laurence Fishburne has had both lucky breaks and a hard-working actor’s life. He got roles in a string of director Francis Ford Coppola films after he lied about his age. He met soon-to-be director John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood) when Fishburne played Cowboy Curtis on Pee-wee’s Playhouse. He excelled in Spike Lee’s School Daze but turned down Do the Right Thing. And he’s the face of endless memes now, thanks to his role as Morpheus in The Matrix movies. But Laurence Fishburne has some frock flick cred too, and I’d love to see him flex his historical costume acting muscles again. How about you?
Tyrone ‘Clean’ Miller in Apocalypse Now (1979)

Robby Robinson in The Six O’Clock Follies (1980)

Corporal Dorsey in “The Tooth Shall Set You Free,” M*A*S*H (1982)

Jimbo Collins in For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story (1983)

Bumpy Rhodes in The Cotton Club (1984)

Swain in The Color Purple (1985)

Ike Turner in What’s Love Got to Do With It (1993)

In an interview with Vulture, Fishburne said of playing Ike Turner:
“I was trying to humanize him, because in humanizing him, you deepen her. It’s a complicated relationship when it’s abusive and one has dominance over the other and is manipulative, and I just felt like for him to be just the villain wasn’t going to be good enough.”
[Not an editor’s note: Fishburne is SO EVIL AND SCARY AND MEAN in this film, and yet SO FRICKIN’ HOT, I am always conflicted! — Kendra]
Hannibal Lee in The Tuskegee Airmen (1995)

Othello in Othello (1995)

In the article, “Two Actors on Shakespeare, Race, and Performance: A Conversation between Harry J. Lennix and Laurence Fishburne,” in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol. 27, No. 3, Fishburne discussed how he played Othello and found a backstory within the text.
“For the actor, myself, I’ll tell you why it was great for me, why I would love to do it again, why I do believe it is extremely challenging and it’s challenging ot that aspect of having pride in one’s own race and one’s people. Very, very difficult. Because he is a child. He goes from being this great general to being almost an infant. And that hurts. You can’t get around it; it’s in the text. … I had to figure my way around it, or my way through it, a way to go through that journey.”
Caleb Humphries in Miss Evers’ Boys (1997)

Bumpy Johnson in Hoodlum (1997)

Edward in Bobby (2006)

Thurgood Marshall in Thurgood (2011)

Alex Haley in Roots (2016)

Nelson Mandela in Madiba (2017)

What’s your favorite historical costume movie or TV role by Laurence Fishburne?
Ooh, some of these sound really good and I didn’t know about them! (‘Thurgood’, for example.) I loved him in Othello.
Loved him in ‘Othello’ as well. Still my favourite rendition of a very problematic & yet still relevant Play.
He stayed with me as Ike Turner, the longest time, after seeing his portrayal in ‘Whats Love Got to Do with It’. It was disturbingly good. But was hard for me to shake. Had forgotten that he had a part in ‘The Color Purple’ which is, in my humble opinion, the best book adaptation (into film) ever made.
Not a F.F. role or “role” at all….But I laughed my ass off at Laurence Fishburne’s stone cold narration of Netflix’s ‘Death to 2020’….- “so BAD they named it twice!!” 🤣
He’s such a great actor. Loved his performance in Othello, a hard role and he crushed it.
Will always love him for breaking character during a Broadway play and telling a rude audience member to shut off his/her effing cellphone. Enthusiastic applause followed.
ahh, I agree–so many things I didn’t know about that look good. Haven’t seen tons of his work, but really enjoy what I have seen.
Of these, I’ve seen The Color Purple. Definitely should see more on this list.
Madiba and Othello are my favourites. I didn’t even know he was in the Cotton Club. Hopefully, I can find the director’s cut. And Tuskegee Airman.
That is one hot Othello! Desdemona would have to be crazy to prefer another man to that! But of course she doesn’t. Othello is gaslighted by Iago.
I agree, but we must also acknowledge that Nathaniel Parker was at peak hotness as Michael Cassio!! Fishburne and Parker were both so FINE in this movie. And Branagh didn’t look bad either!!
While most people’s favorite sequence in Apocalypse Now is Robert Duvall and the helicopters clearing the beach, my favorite is Fishburne dancing to the Stones as another member of the riverboat crew waterskis behind as Sheen reads papers on his mission to find Brando. The surreal combination of military duty, reckless youth, frivolous recreation and the agricultural Vietnamese has stuck with me ever since I saw the film. Fishburne was so very young (14-16) and his youth as well as his acting talent really emphasize that so many US soldiers in. Vietnam were boys.
Oh, Lord–I’ve never seen him give a bad performance. Even when you think he might be miscast, he always manages to pull it off. And his VOICE–I long for him to narrate the works of Edgar Allan Poe. But I digress–I LOVE his Othello. And his version of Ike Turner is just–WOW!!!!
Great performance as Othello indeed.
“Hoodlum” is a definite must see! It has Cicely Tyson and Clarence Williams III as well, and the fashion seems to be on point.