Forrest Whitaker

Fun Fact: Whitaker made his film debut in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, where he played a football player.

Claim to Fame: in 2007, Whitaker won an Oscar for his starring role in Last King of Scotland.

Forest Steven Whitaker is an American actor, producer, and director. Whitaker won an Academy Award for his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland. Whitaker has also won a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA. He became the fourth African American man to win an Academy Award for Best Actor, following in the footsteps of Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, and Jamie Foxx.

He has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Bird and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. However, for his recurring role as ex-LAPD Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh on the gritty, award-winning television series, The Shield, Whitaker merely had to draw on his childhood years growing up in South Central Los Angeles, California.


Whitaker was born in Longview, Texas and his family moved to South Central Los Angeles due to racism in 1965, when he was four. His father, Forest Whitaker, Jr., was an insurance salesman and the son of novelist Forest Whitaker, Sr. His mother, Laura Francis, was a special education teacher who put herself through college and earned two Masters degrees while raising her children. Whitaker has two younger brothers, Kenn and Damon, and an older sister, Deborah.

As a teenager, Whitaker commuted from Carson to wealthy Palisades High School on LA's West Side.

Whitaker then attended Cal Poly Pomona on a football scholarship, but left due to a debilitating back injury when he was hurt in training by defensive end Manny Duran. He was accepted to the Music Conservatory at the University of Southern California to study opera as a tenor, and subsequently was accepted into the University's Drama Conservatory.



Whitaker has a long history of working with well-regarded film directors and fellow actors. In his first onscreen role of note, he played a football player in the 1982 film version of Cameron Crowe's coming-of-age teen-retrospective, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. His performance, which has been called "transcendent," and a Golden Globe nomination. Whitaker continued to work with a number of well-known directors throughout the 1990s. He starred in the 1990 film Downtown with Anthony Edwards and Penelope Ann Miller. Neil Jordan cast him in the pivotal role of "Jody" in his 1992 film, The Crying Game. Todd McCarthy, of Variety, described Whitaker's performance as "big-hearted," "hugely emotional," and "simply terrific." In 1994, he was a member of the cast that won the first ever National Board of Review Award for Best Acting by an Ensemble for Robert Altman's film, Prêt-à-Porter. He gave a "characteristically emotional performance" in Wayne Wang and Paul Auster's 1995 film, Smoke.

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