Jeffrey Wright

You don't have to press very hard for me to admit that Jeffrey Wright is among my top five favorite actors -- Joaquin Phoenix, Tilda Swinton, Viola Davis, post-Potter Daniel Radcliffe being the other four. I've not seen everything Wright has done (he seems to be everywhere and in everything) but in all that I have seen he is immersed and controlled, no superfluous motion or affect, a joy to watch. I remember first seeing him in Ang Lee's Ride with the Devil, in which he played a former slave attached to a young Reb fighting Union soldiers in Missouri. I then went backwards and sought out Julian Schnabel's Basquiat, the biopic of the legendary street artist. I saw him in Topdog/Underdog on Broadway with Yasiin Bey (Mos Def at the time) in 2002 and a year later he was starring in Angels in America on HBO. Wright won a Golden Globe for playing multiple roles but primarily the nurse Belize, arguably playwright Tony Kushner's alter ego, and had won a Tony for his Broadway performances. I know nearly nothing about Wright aside from what I see on the screen ... and that he was also born in D.C. Homeboy.