20 Questions: Forest Whitaker

The biggest young actor in America--at six feet two inches and 260 pounds, he dwarfs Penn, Dillon and Depp--Forest Whitaker is also one of the least likely stars in American film. He's overweight. He's shy. And he's black, a condition that has cost him a few plum roles in Hollywood. Whitaker won the Best Actor award at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival for his performance as doomed jazzman Charlie Parker in Clint Eastwood's "Bird." He has also appeared in Martin Scorsese's "The Color of Money," Oliver Stone's "Platoon" and Barry Levinson's "Good Morning, Vietnam" and headlined with Gregory Hines and Robin Givens in Bill Duke's "A Rage in Harlem," which Whitaker co-produced. He now stars with Ray Liotta and Kiefer Sutherland in "Article 99." He is suddenly, at 30, a power to be reckoned with.

Whitaker was raised on the tough streets of Compton, California. He might have become a Crip or a Blood, but he wasn't a joiner. Fortunately for him, he was big enough to fend for himself--to follow his heart from the local gridiron's defensive line to Dylan Thomas and Shakespeare.

Contributing Editor Kevin Cook met Whitaker at the Columbia Bar & Grille on Sunset Boulevard. "The first thing you notice about Forest is the size of his hands," says Cook. "We shook hands and my hand disappeared. The next thing that struck me was his smile. He has the sweetest smile, the smile of a man who wouldn't hurt a fly. We spent two hours talking and 100 minutes of that time was as smooth as could be. It was only when the subject of racism--of life with the L.A.P.D.--came up that he sat up straight, fists clenched, and I noted again how big a man he is."

1.

[Q] Playboy: What was it like to be all the rage in Cannes?

[A] Whitaker: The first time, for Bird, was amazing. Impossible to imagine if you haven't been there--flashing light bulbs everywhere, people screaming Clint's name. When I won, I was overwhelmed.

Last year, I went to promote A Rage in Harlem with friends--Bill Duke, Gregory Hines and Robin Givens--and it was fun watching them see it for the first time. Spike Lee had a party for Jungle Fever, a great film. Stevie Wonder was there to do the sound, and that alone made it the best party I've been to.

I escaped a lot, too. I went to a little restaurant up in the hills and ate with the natives. My French is pretty poor, but I talked to them. The owner recognized me. He said I was the first American actor who'd been there. He wanted me to sign the book at the door. I look in the book and all these French artists had drawn pictures and written poetry in it. I was embarrassed. I thought, I should show them I'm an artist, too, but I just wrote something nice about the restaurant. In English.

2.

[Q] Playboy: Defend or refute the charge that Spike Lee is a racist.

[A] Whitaker: He understands that we live in a racist society. He puts things in his films that happen. The interracial love affair in Jungle Fever, the violence in Do the Right Thing.

When I was growing up in South Central L.A., I'd be walking through the fields around my house. A police helicopter turns its searchlights on me. I hear the loudspeaker: "Don't move, stop where you are!" It's ridiculous. The harassment never stops. The Rodney King incident was not unique. It just happened to be filmed. I know all about it. I'm an actor, but I'm also a large black man in L.A. Last year, I'm sitting in my car on Hollywood Boulevard, sitting in a no-parking zone. Next thing I know, there're cops all around, I'm on my knees in the street with my hands behind my head. L.A. police are not subtle. This is an inherently racial act, but it happens all the time. Ever since I was a youth, I've been thrown on the ground or across cars, put on my knees, and I'm one of the lucky ones. Friends of mine have been murdered.

3.

[Q] Playboy: By the Los Angeles police?

[A] Whitaker: Yes. They want to be the sharks in the water, inspiring fear in the people. It won't work. The people are frustrated. The people are angry. They want to feel they have at least a little power, but the police impose fear. I've seen it in action. I have friends in the police department. I've ridden with them. I like them, but I've seen them get stoked when it's time to fight. It's scary. There are a million cars in the chase and they're pulling on their gloves, getting ready for the fight.

I had a friend who lived down the street. They shot him eleven times. Killed him. The harassment's got to stop, that's all. There has to be stronger external monitoring of the L.A.P.D. It's not enough to have people inside the department do it--they're the problem. There has to be reform, or the black and Hispanic communities are going to explode. This is a volatile city and the police are adding fuel to the fire.

4.

[Q] Playboy: You escaped South Central L.A. by being a high school football star, not too different from the role you played in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. What happened to football?

[A] Whitaker: I played tackle for Palisades High. Jay Schroeder [now a Los Angeles Raider] was our quarterback. We were undefeated, never won a game by fewer than 32 points, and I was our leader on defense. I got recruited by UCLA, Hawaii, Utah State and Arizona--but there was a problem. I didn't live in the school zone. I should have been at Compton High, but my mother wanted me to go to a good school. So before we played Granada Hills in the play-offs--their quarterback was John Elway--somebody reported me, which meant we might have to forfeit all our games. Coaches from all over are there, and I can't play. We lose. So I took a football scholarship at Pomona College and studied music. Tried out for Under Milk Wood, got the lead. Then I auditioned for the acting program at USC, but it was my voice that got me a scholarship--in classical music. I never played football again.

5.

[Q] Playboy: What was the movie that made you think you'd like to make a living at acting?

[A] Whitaker: Taxi Driver. I remember the line, "You talkin' to me?" A lot of people in the neighborhood went around saying, "You talkin' to me?" That character De Niro played--he was base, but there was something cool about him.

6.

[Q] Playboy: You're now thought of as one of the best actors in movies. Who would you shell out seven dollars to see?

[A] Whitaker: Al Pacino, Mickey Rourke, Sean Penn, Denzel Washington. But I think more in terms of different kinds of truth in different performances: John Hurt in Midnight Express, De Niro in Raging Bull, Pacino in Scarface, Depardieu in Cyrano de Bergerac.

7.

[Q] Playboy: What has been the truest screen moment you have shared with another actor?

[A] Whitaker: It got cut, but I'll never forget it. It was with Mickey. The film was Johnny Handsome. He was deformed; I was the plastic surgeon who made him Johnny Handsome--gave him a chance to escape his past. But he's scared to go out into the world. He's normal now, but he's not, not on the inside. That's what recidivism is all about. So I'm saying goodbye to him, and his line is, "Thanks." Mickey looks into my eyes and I swear to you, I don't know how he did this, I swear I heard four or five different lines: "You worked really hard. It's cool. Maybe I should lie to you, tell you this is good. I'm sorry I have to disappoint you." But all he really said was, "Thanks." I walked away thinking, How in the hell did he do that?

8.

[Q] Playboy: You played a more famous scene in A Rage in Harlem, in which you licked Robin Givens from top to bottom. Was that all Robin, or did she have a bottom double?

[A] Whitaker: [Laughs] Look at the shot. It's a very full shot, from her head to her feet, one shot. You can see there was no body double. That was a hot part for me to play.

9.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have to fight your being aroused in that scene?

[A] Whitaker: No. If I don't allow her to set fire to me when she touches me, to turn me on, the scene won't work. You have to be true to the scene, and that was a lovemaking scene. I can't speak for Robin, but I did not fight my being aroused.

10.

[Q] Playboy: You were playing a virgin whose first sex partner was played by Robin Givens. How lucky did he feel?

[A] Whitaker: Overwhelmed. It's all new to him. He's never had a woman, never had a woman in his room, even. She's so beautiful--her face, her eyes, her lips, her voice. To him, just the notion of her sitting on his bed is almost as exciting as making love. For me, trying to re-create that feeling was exciting.

11.

[Q] Playboy: You've worked with directors of wildly different styles, from Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone to Barry Levinson and Clint Eastwood. What are their secrets?

[A] Whitaker: They're all passionate. I was just a day player for Martin on The Color of Money, a pool hustler. He changed one line. "Say it like a question," he said. I did it and it worked. Barry was a standup comic, so he's a great storyteller. I could listen to him all day. He and Robin Williams are both great comics. And Oliver--he's obsessive. On Platoon, I had to carry ammunition fifty yards up this hill and in the first take I slipped. I'm sliding down this hill, clawing my way back up. Finally, "Cut!" I'm burying my head, I blew the scene. So Oliver's yelling, "Let's do it again!" And just as he's walking away, he says, "Forest, I love the fall. Keep it in." I do that fall fifteen more times and he thinks I'm cheating him. It's not good enough. "Give me my fall!" he says. The ground is slick, I can't help falling, but every time it's "Give me my fall!" Oliver doesn't miss anything.

With Clint, there's no Dirty Harry. Clint's easy. He never loses his temper. Everything is smooth. He understands actors, too. He gave me a lot of freedom in creating my character in Bird. He didn't tell me how to play Charlie Parker. One thing I loved about Clint was his commitment to the music--the energy in him, the need to make it right. He brought in a lot of great musicians to remix those old tunes, but he tried so hard to be true to Bird's music. Some tunes are orchestrated differently, but he retained the heart in them. You can't say what sound Charlie Parker would have if he were playing today, but Clint was true to Charlie Parker's heart.

12.

[Q] Playboy: How did you learn to be Bird?

[A] Whitaker: I put pictures of him in the room where I was staying. I listened to his music, got to a place where I felt how it felt to be him, to be a heroin addict, a man who tried to kill himself. Waking up feeling lost, wanting to die. It's like living in tar. I'm not saying I felt everything he did, but at least in my imagination, I knew him. Through his music. I tried to hear the music in Bird because that's where the heart is. Everyone has a certain musicality, a sound, not vocally but viscerally--the way they do things, the way they move. That's what I try to hear when I work.

13.

[Q] Playboy: What's the best movie role you didn't get?

[A] Whitaker: Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Jonathan Demme wouldn't see me.

Anthony Hopkins did a great job in the part. But mine would have been more sexual. There's a sexuality in that kind of evil, something pure, a beauty in the ugliness. Exploring that, forcing it on the actress [Jodie Foster], would have been interesting. I read about the man that character was based on. I tried to figure out what he was thinking, how he felt when he killed, and I think he saw a pure light in the dark. His insanity--his overt lust at things that are raw--I think it was sexual, and that would have been the timbre of my heart. You know how you cut yourself and suck the blood to make it stop? The notion of living in that pain, that warmth, even of ripping open a body and bathing in it--there's something that can almost be understood in that, something primal that connects with something in yourself. It's an interesting thing to try to feel, the beauty in the purely grotesque. He wanted to quench a thirst, a lust. The sexuality of the young woman's innocence--I would have been trying to suck that from her, to satisfy my hunger, and my hunger would have been sexual.

14.

[Q] Playboy: Like many American actors, you research a role until you almost become the part. As Laurence Olivier supposedly asked Dustin Hoffman on the set of Marathon Man, "Why don't you try acting?"

[A] Whitaker: [Bristles] You're referring to the scene where Dustin didn't sleep because his character hadn't slept. External acting--which is classically considered the British way of acting--creates a character physically and then finds the insides. American actors tend to go from the inside out. I personally am not a good enough actor to play exhaustion without feeling it. And maybe, maybe Olivier could just stroll on and seem perfectly tired. Maybe not. Maybe Olivier was wrong. But the truth is the truth, it doesn't matter how you get there.

15.

[Q] Playboy: You paint tortured canvases that have to do with the roles you play. Will we see a Whitaker next to a Francis Bacon in the Museum of Modern Art?

[A] Whitaker: I'm no great painter. An art critic would probably call my paintings primitive, aggressive, off-kilter realism. But I don't sell my paintings and I don't paint for anyone but myself. They're part of my work.

There's a painting I did when I was working on Johnny Handsome. Johnny's falling and I'm reaching down, in flames, trying to pull him out. I identified with Johnny. He was deformed and white, but he could have been a black man. He could have been me, a minor public figure who wants to be a hermit, trying to deal with my inadequacies, falling backward all the time.

16.

[Q] Playboy: You play a hired killer in your new film, Hit Man. Can you identify with a killer?

[A] Whitaker: Sure. The guy in the film is a lot like everyone else, a guy with a job who's having a sort of mid-life crisis. He has to fight the sensitive side of himself, the "good" side, or he can't do his job. Feelings he doesn't want to have--good feelings, most of us would think--start coming up in him and he fights them. These are the things he hates in himself. One of the journeys for me, in playing him, was trying to see the things I repress in myself. My job lets me walk into people's lives, and in learning about them, I learn about myself.

I used to go out with people and feel zapped, like my energy was pulled out of me, like a dead battery. I'm stronger now. I've learned that I can live in my solitude among people and enjoy it.

17.

[Q] Playboy: Did you study murderers for your role in Hit Man?

[A] Whitaker: I went to Pittsburgh and hung out in places I thought I might meet that kind of guy. I was at a bar in the Strip District. Everybody was out of a Fellini movie--the prostitutes were big and the street characters were angry. All of a sudden, this guy starts screaming at another man, "You're lookin' at my woman!" He climbs up on the bar, yelling, then jumps down. There's a big fight and finally he gets shoved out the front door. He comes back with a gun. Everyone freaks and I'm thinking, This is my exit. I got out of there fast.

18.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have any insane fans?

[A] Whitaker: It's not like I'm Tom Cruise. But sometimes people grab me, jump on my car, drop notes off at my home. Weirder stuff, too. I live in the Hollywood Hills. I've got a giant schnauzer and a Rottweiler pup tied up in the yard, and somebody's been untying them. Tied the schnauzer where the Rottweiler was the other night, and the Rottweiler where the schnauzer was. I don't get it. I'm just a character actor with dogs. Maybe this is the price I have to pay. But what's the point?

19.

[Q] Playboy: Soon you'll be starring in The Brown Bomber, a film about heavyweight champ Joe Louis, who was lighter than you are. Have you started the Joe Louis diet?

[A] Whitaker: [Sighs] I haven't weighed two hundred since 1985. I'll have to change my way of thinking, the way I live in my body. It'll be a long progression over six months--training, boxing, four or five miles of roadwork a day. It should be good for my health, but I can't say I'm really looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to reading about him.

20.

[Q] Playboy: Physically, you're the opposite of Hollywood's idea of a star. In Bird, Diane Venora, playing your wife, said, "Is he cute? No, but you'll dig him." Why do movie fans dig you?

[A] Whitaker: There must be some charisma, some charm, in me. And some truth. I hope the truth is magnetic--that's the whole idea.

hollywood's biggest black star--pound for pound--recalls the taste of robin givens and wonders why a crazed fan keeps switching his dogs