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Great Lives from History: African Americans

Forest Whitaker

by Eric Novod

Actor and director

Whitaker is a versatile actor whose devastating portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland(2006) earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Areas of achievement: Film: acting; Film: direction; Philanthropy

Early Life

Forest Steven Whitaker (WIH-tah-kuhr) was born in Longview, Texas, in 1961, to Forest Whitaker, Jr., an insurance salesman, and Laura Francis, a schoolteacher with two graduate degrees. The family relocated to South Central Los Angeles when the younger Forest Whitaker was a child. After ten years, the family moved to the Carson section of Los Angeles, where the teenage Whitaker lived until leaving for college at age seventeen. Whitaker grew up with an older sister, Deborah, and two younger brothers, Kenn and Damon.

Whitaker’s mother, aware of the top public schools in the area, insisted on sending her son to Palisades High School, which required a two-hour daily commute. Whitaker was a superior student, a defensive tackle on the football team, and a promising singer and actor.

Upon graduating in 1979, Whitaker chose to attend California State Polytechnic Institute, Pomona, on a football scholarship. When he was sidelined by a serious back injury, he decided to change both his school and career path. Whitaker was accepted by the University of Southern California (USC), first as a voice student (an operatic tenor) and then as a student in the school’s Drama Conservatory. An exceedingly focused student, Whitaker continued his studies at the Drama Studio London in Berkeley, California, upon his graduation from USC in 1982.

Life’s Work

Whitaker’s professional career began shortly after he relocated to Berkeley in the early 1980’s. Beginning in television, he guest-starred in episodes of Cagney and Lacey (1983), Hill Street Blues (1984), and Diff’rent Strokes (1985). Upon auditioning for feature film work, Whitaker promptly received supporting roles in major motion pictures, including Cameron Crowe’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money (1986), Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986), and Barry Levinson’s Good Morning, Vietnam (1987).

While Whitaker had already garnered industry attention from these notable supporting roles, it was his memorable portrayal of Charlie “Bird” Parker in Clint Eastwood’s Bird (1988) that made the young character actor into an award-winning leading man. His legendary preparation for this role, which included extensive research into jazz and intensive saxophone lessons, solidified his reputation as one of film’s most dedicated craftsmen. For his depiction of Parker, Whitaker won the best actor award at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival, and he was nominated for a Golden Globe award.

Whitaker continued working consistently throughout the 1990’s, varying the occasional leading role with several well-received supporting parts. Notable roles from this period include those in Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game (1992), in Stephen Hopkins’s Blown Away (1994), in Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter (1994), in Jon Turteltaub’s Phenomenon (1996), and the title role in Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999).

Whitaker began directing films in the 1990’s, debuting with a Home Box Office (HBO) film about inner-city violence, Strapped, in 1993. He then directed a successful romantic comedy, Waiting to Exhale (1995), starring Angela Bassett and Whitney Houston, and Hope Floats (1998), a drama starring Harry Connick, Jr., and Sandra Bullock.

Steady work continued for Whitaker throughout the 2000’s. The decade began with his role as Ker in Battlefield Earth (2000), a film that met with minimal box office sales and universally poor reviews. Rebounding from an atypical disappointment, Whitaker next appeared in David Fincher’s Panic Room (2002); in Joel Schumacher’s Phone Booth (2002); in Aric Avelino’s American Gun (2002), for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award; and in First Daughter (2004), which he also directed.

In 2006, Whitaker delivered his second award-winning, career-defining role with his portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in Kevin Macdonald’s The Last King of Scotland. Whitaker won nearly every major acting award for this role, including the Academy Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award.

After his Oscar win, Whitaker balanced appearances in big-budget films, including Denzel Washington’s The Great Debaters (2007) and Peter Travis’s Vantage Point (2008), with roles in small independent pictures, including Winged Creatures (2009) and My Own Love Song (2010). Whitaker appeared in television shows more frequently throughout the 2000’s, participating in six episodes of the NBC hospital drama ER, from 2006 to 2007, and seasons five and six of the FX Network police drama The Shield.

Whitaker met his wife, actor Keisha Nash, on the set of Blown Away (1994), and the couple married in 1996. They have two daughters, Sonnet and True, and a son and a daughter from previous relationships, Ocean and Autumn.

Significance

Willing to learn a new instrument, language, or cultural tradition and to change his physical appearance for any role, Whitaker has set an industry standard for commitment to his professional craft. Aside from his on-screen legacy, Whitaker is a deeply peaceful, spiritual, and philanthropic man who has benefited from karate and kundalini yoga, has contributed to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and has supported Hope North, a boarding school for Ugandan children.

Further Reading

1 

Gabbard, Krin. Jammin’ at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Includes a discussion of the authenticity of Whitaker’s portrayal of Charlie Parker in Clint Eastwood’s Bird (1988).

2 

Mapp, Edward. African Americans and the Oscar: Decades of Struggle and Achievement. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2008. A discussion of the African American men who have won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the roles for which they were honored.

3 

Sternbergh, Adam. “Out of the Woods: How Forest Whitaker Escaped His Career Slump.” New York Magazine (January 9, 2006). A discussion of how Whitaker’s Academy Award-winning performance in The Last King of Scotland (2006) positively altered his career.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Novod, Eric. "Forest Whitaker." Great Lives from History: African Americans, edited by Carl L. Bankston, Salem Press, 2011. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLAA_179455597876.
APA 7th
Novod, E. (2011). Forest Whitaker. In C. L. Bankston (Ed.), Great Lives from History: African Americans. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Novod, Eric. "Forest Whitaker." Edited by Carl L. Bankston. Great Lives from History: African Americans. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2011. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.