Forest Steven Whitaker III (born July 15, 1961) is an actor, producer and director of film and television. He played Dr. Stephen Arden in the 1996 movie Species.
Career[]
After making his film debut in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Whitaker went on to earn a reputation for intensive character study work for films, such as Platoon (1986), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Bird (1988), The Crying Game (1992), Phenomenon (1996), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), The Great Debaters (2007), The Butler (2013), Arrival (2016), and Respect (2021). He has also appeared in Panic Room (2002), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) as Saw Gerrera, and Black Panther (2018) as Zuri. In 1995, he gave a "characteristically emotional performance" in Wayne Wang and Paul Auster's Smoke. In 1996, he played the role of a good-natured man in Phenomenon, alongside John Travolta and Robert Duvall, which earned him a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Supporting Actor – Drama, and was also nominated for NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture.