Wright, Jeffrey

Source:

 African American National Biography

Wright, Jeffrey

(7 Dec. 1965– ),

actor and producer, was born in Washington, D.C. His father died when he was a year old; his mother, an attorney employed by the United States Customs Department, raised him with the assistance of her sister, a nurse. Wright attended the elite St. Alban's School for Boys, a respected private, college preparatory institution, located on the grounds of the world-renowned Washington National Cathedral. With early aspirations of becoming an attorney, in 1983 he enrolled at the prestigious and highly selective Amherst College in Massachusetts. Unsuspectingly, Wright developed an interest in acting during his senior year; and, when in 1987 he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Amherst, instead of attending law school, he accepted an acting scholarship from New York University (NYU). After two months with the Theater Department at NYU, Wright was presented the opportunity to act in a Lorraine Hansberry play and decided to pursue a professional career as an actor on his own terms.

Wright was instantly successful, securing roles in off-Broadway productions; and in 1990 he achieved his first role in a major film, Presumed Innocent, starring Harrison Ford, in which he portrayed an attorney. Subsequently, while continuing in the theater, he began appearing in television roles, among them Separate but Equal (a dramatization of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's victory in Brown v. Board of Education, starring Sidney Poitier as Thurgood Marshall. In 1994 Wright was cast as Norman “Belize” Arriaga, in the award-winning Broadway production of Angels in America: Perestroika; for his portrayal of a gay nurse forced to care for a homophobic patient dying of AIDS he won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. In 1996 he played the lead role in the critically acclaimed biopic/drama film Basquiat, opposite the actors Davis Bowie and Benecio del Toro, as the acclaimed painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died of a drug overdose just as he began to receive international recognition. The movie also portrayed racial disparities in the 1980s art scene in New York City, which Wright knew quite well. He had moved to New York City to attend NYU only one month before Basquiat died, and had lived in a building where the artist had spent much time; they thus knew many of the same people.

Subsequently, his film career accelerated with notable supporting roles in films such as Celebrity directed by Woody Allen (1998) and lead roles such as his performance in the director John Singleton's remake of the 1970s Blaxploitation classic Shaft (2000), opposite actor Samuel L. Jackson; for his portrayal he won the Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Performance, Male. In 2001 Wright won the American Film Institute Actor of the Year Award for male in a movie or miniseries for his characterization of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the cable movie Boycott. The same year he appeared as Howard Bingham, the Muhammad Ali biographer, in Ali, starring Wil Smith as Ali.

Wright has an affinity for the stage and remained a presence in theater, winning an Obie Award in 2002 for his performance in the Suzan Lori Parks play Topdog/Underdog opposite Don Cheadle. Already he had achieved recognition as a versatile and multifaceted actor, and his opportunities continued to flourish. In 2003 Angels in America was produced for HBO cable-television, with the actors Al Pacino and Meryl Streep; for his portrayal of “Belize,” again Wright won commendations including the 2003 Hollywood Foreign Press Association award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role-Television Series, and the Black Reel Award for Television: Best Actor (2004), Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie (2004), and a Golden Globe Award for best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television (2004). The San Diego Film Critics Society Awards named Wright Best Supporting actor for his role in Broken Flowers (2005). He won Best Supporting Actor from Black Reel Awards in 2006 for his performance in Lackawanna Blues. Black Reel Awards recognized Wright again in 2008 for his portrayal of the Blues Hall of Fame artist, Muddy Waters in Cadillac Records. Wright also portrayed General and Secretary of State Colin Powell in Oliver Stone's movie about the former United States President, W (2008). Wright has also had a recurring role as CIA agent Felix Leiter, in the James Bond series in Casino Royale (2006) and Quantum of Solace (2008). Wright also produced Blackout (2007) and One Blood (2009).

Wright is vocal on social and political issues, particularly as they concern racial disparities. In 2008 he endorsed U.S. Senator Barack Obama for president of the United States and hosted numerous fundraisers for his campaign. A highly publicized brawl in a Louisiana bar during the filming of W. necessitated his absence from a visible seat at the inauguration of President Obama. Toward the end of the first decade in the twenty-first century he spent valuable time launching his Taia Peace Foundation, an economic-development company in Sierra Leone to help rural communities manage their natural resources.

Wright met his wife, the Scottish-Nigerian actress Carmen Ejogo, on the set of Boycott (2001), where they portrayed the couple Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott-King. They were married in August 2000 and together have two children, Elijah and Juno.

Wright starred on Broadway in 2010, in the lead role of Jacques Cornet in A Free Man of Color, a swashbuckling drama about the wealthiest person of color in New Orleans in 1801, prior to the Louisiana Purchase. In 2011 he appeared in two major movies, the techno-thriller Source Code, and the George Clooney-directed political thriller, The Ides of March.

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