Wesley Snipes
by Lynn Norment
Ebony Magazine, November 1997, v.53 n.1 p188

HIS career is red hot, yet the man himself--actor Wesley Snipes--is super cool. Not cold as in icy, for he is very warm gracious and personable. And not cool as in nonchalant, for the man is engaging and intriguing and exudes sex appeal up close and personal just as he does so effectively on the silver screen.

That sex appeal, intrigue and personality, in addition to exceptional talent, have helped Snipes carve out a niche for himself in Hollywood and etch his way into the hearts and minds of movie fans with roles that are as diverse as they are compelling. Memorable are his intense architect in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, his ruthless drug lord in New Jack City, his audacious, martial arts expert-hero in Passenger 57, his colorful drag queen in To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Love Julie Newmar, and his intense police detective in Murder at 1600.

Snipes is among a small, elite group of Black male actors who have established themselves as powerbrokers in Hollywood. Like fellow heartthrob Denzel Washington, Snipes commands $10 million per film; but while Washington may do one film a year, Snipes consistently has done two or three a year.

Despite his high-profile career, Snipes says he lives a "very simple, down-to-earth" lifestyle between homes in Los Angeles, New York and Florida (See companion story beginning on Page 194). His passions include motorcycles, and he loves hiphop, acid jazz and reggae music. "I still go to places I've been going to for 10 years. I eat in the 'hood. All the people know me," he says.

However, that does not make him immune to the pitfalls of celebrity and success. "I mean, people want your time; people want your energy. So if you have strong energy, people who don't have it want it. They want to be around it, and sometimes they want to be it. There's struggle, a tug-of-war for your attention by everybody from friends to family to people in the business to people who are trying to get into the business," says the actor who is known for his generosity. "And yes, they definitely want the money. They always want the money."

When asked what makes him happy, Wesley ponders for a moment. "Good sex is hard to come by," he says. "Good sex can make you happy; you come away feeling happy."

Dressed in black linen and wearing heavy silver jewelry with stones that have symbolic meaning, he describes himself as patient and easygoing. "I was born under the sign Leo, so I'm very much like a cat," he says, rubbing his hand over his bald head. "Cats hang around. They sleep. They don't stress nobody. They'll play with you, let you cuddle and pet them, but there are times when they've had enough. When they've had enough, they just walk away. And if you keep bothering them, they'll give you a little scratch."

On the personal level, Snipes, a divorced father of a "precocious" 8-year-old son, Jelani, says he enjoys spending time with "spirited" women. "Either the hot-headed ones or the ones who just think they're divas," he explains. "I like them because they have spice and creativity. I like a woman who reads. I think a number of my relationships [ended] because she didn't read and we didn't have anything to talk about.... But I'm not into the ones who want to jump up and fight and get loud. That's not my flavor."

The Asian model and restaurateur he introduces as "my lady, Donna [Wong]" has been Snipes' companion for the past year and a half. When asked if he dates Black women, he says: "Primarily all of my life I've dated Black women.... Oh, most definitely. Oh, my God. Mostly. But it just so happens that now I'm dating an Asian woman. It's different. Different energy, different spirit, but a nice person." He says he is not ready for marriage; nor is Donna. "She's got to learn to deal with the love scenes in the movies first," says Snipes as he chuckles. "Got to get to a place where it's very comfortable."

Wesley says he realizes that there are Black women still who get an attitude about Black men with Asian, White or Hispanic women. "I know we've all been hurt, and we're all very wounded," he says, addressing Black women. "We have to acknowledge that, both male and female, in the Black experience. We're a wounded people. And we want to possess and we want to own. We don't want to compromise. We feel like we've compromised enough. But in any relationship you have to compromise. There's no way around it. And I say to Black women also, Brothers who are very, very successful, or who have become somewhat successful, usually it's been at a great expense, unseen by the camera's eye....

"He doesn't want to come home to someone who's going to be mean and aggravating and unkind and who is going to be `please me, please me.' He doesn't want to come home to that. He doesn't want to come home to have a fight with someone who is supposed to be his helpmate. So it's very natural that he's going to turn to some place that's more compassionate.... You've worked hard and you deserve to come home to comforting. And usually a man who has that will appreciate it. Because I've never known one cat, all those cats I've hung out with and still hang out with, who found something that they really, really like and didn't go back to it. They all go back. It's very simple."

When asked for clarification, Snipes emphasizes that he is not saying that a Black woman can not be that type of woman a man wants to come home to. "Not at all," he declares. "Absolutely not. That's the point. I want to come home and I don't want to argue. I want to be pleasing, but if I ask you to get me a glass of water, you're going to say, `Them days is over.' Please. Come on," Wesley says. "A man likes that. I don't know why. It's been that way forever. It makes him proud, you know, like when the guys come over and your lady comes out with a tray of food and says `I made this up for you.' And the guys are like, `Oh man, you've got a great women.' And the man says, `Yeah, I do.' A man will appreciate it when you're kind and when you're nice.

"For successful women, it's hard," he continues, obviously quite comfortable and articulate on the subject of relationships. "The competition is fierce. And if he's a man of success and power who happens to be handsome, of course you're not the only one who thinks he's handsome. But you don't have to punish him because of that once you get with him. Don't punish him because somebody else likes him."

Continuing with his openness, Snipes says he's had his heart broken more than once, and at times by Black women. "Most definitely. Most definitely," he says.

In his new film, the dramatic love-triangle One Night Stand hearts are broken as Snipes' character is caught in a love triangle between two beautiful women--one of whom is blond (Nastassja Kinski), the other Asian (Ming-Na Wen). The film recently won him best actor award at the prestigious Venice Film Festival.

The audience will definitely find elements in the story that they can relate to their own lives, says Snipes. "It raises some very common issues that many of us go through once we get to a level of success or accomplishment, about what would make us happy and what we would change once we accomplish it," says Snipes. "Max [his character] is at a point in his life where he's questioning some of his choices. Not that he's disappointed with his choices or angry with anyone; it's just that sometimes in everybody's life, there is a winter. Max finds himself in a winter, and Karen [Kinski] comes as a spark--that first sign of spring in his life."

Snipes is in the midst of the spring of his career, and winter is nowhere in sight. The 35-year-old actor is determined to work as much and as hard as he can while he's still a hot commodity. Over the past decade or so, he has made more than 20 films, and he has at least a half dozen new projects in the works right now.

"It all just kind of works out," he says of his work. " I try to schedule the work in a way where it doesn't drain on me too much. Like prior to U. S. Marshals, I finished Blade, which is a lot more action, a lot more physically demanding. I chose to work on something after that where there wasn't as much of a physical demand."

Snipes realizes that many people associate him with action films and aren't familiar with his "drama-oriented love stories." With One Night Stand, "I wanted to do something where people would be able to see the brighter side of my work," he says.

When asked if the "passion" in One Night Stand compares to the passion in Jungle Fever, he says: "In terms of the sex, oh, it's great. It's hot. There's some hot stuff in there. But it's very, very tastefully and artistically done. I haven't degraded to pornography yet."

He jokingly adds: "They'll never feature me in Playgirl.... I've done nude scenes, but there are some things that should be left hidden."

One Night Stand originally was written for Nicholas Cage, but Cage was preoccupied with another film. The director sought Snipes because he wanted someone with a strong acting background but who also would be attractive to Nastassja Kinski. "It was never an issue of the interracial aspect at all," Snipes says, adding that "the only thing we don't have in this film is a Sister."

He says there were discussions concerning whether his character's wife should be Black or whether she should be White. "Early on there were concerns about the Black community reminiscing to Jungle Fever, and missing the point of the story," he says. "So we didn't want to go that route. And I've done a lot of movies where I've had White women as my co-stars. That would have been kind of redundant. So I said, `Well, let me go either Spanish or Asian. That's something unusual.'"

Snipes was born in Florida, but his family moved to the South Bronx when he was a baby. He says he was not a "ladies' man" during his teen years at New York's High School of Performing Arts or at the Orlando high school from which he graduated. "No, I was kind of on the short side; I had a Napoleon complex," says Snipes, who earned a degree from the State University of New York. "All my girlfriends were taller than me." He says while he was not considered a pretty boy, "I was cute and funny. I could talk. I could kick lyrics."

Today, Snipes says he doesn't consider himself necessarily handsome. "But I've got a little something going on, a little something-something," he adds. "But that's cool with me. Those other guys got ladies and ladies and ladies. But I think I'm richer. What I may be lacking in terms of my physical beauty, I make up for in personality and experience. And tricks. I know a lot of tricks. When you hang in the shadows a little bit, you pick up all the other stuff."

Among the lessons that Snipes has learned over the years is that to survive in the world of film, you must not only perfect your craft, you also must control your destiny. In 1991 he established his Amen Ra Films and has several projects in production. Among them are Down In The Delta for Showtime, for which Maya Angelou will make her directorial debut; Confucius Brown for Universal, which will star Martin Lawrence; The Big Hit in collaboration with Tri Star, for which Snipes will be the executive producer; and a film based on Toni Morrison's Tar Baby. Among Snipes' television projects is an African Scholars series, with the first subject being Dr. John Henrik Clarke.

Snipes, a trained martial artist and a student of Capoeria, the African/Brazilian martial art, makes his debut as a producer with Blade, which is based on the Marvel comic book character. Blade is a "complex individual creature," he says, that is part human, part vampire as a result of his mother being bitten by a vampire in the last month of pregnancy. "This is the most physical role I've ever done," he says. The most martial arts. It's really awesome." The film is due out early 1998.

Awesome on another level will be Snipes' portrayal of the troubled jazz master Miles Davis. "Nobody else has the gall to even try to make it," he says of his company's commitment, adding that he's been doing research on why many talented artists resort to some type of abuse and "what drives a person who is considered genius off the wall.

"In the past millennium, there have been a number of people that we've used the word genius to describe, and the majority of them have been kind of off, kind of crazy, a little cuckoo," says Snipes. "And they don't fit the norm."

Is Wesley Snipes a genius?

"I don't know," he says, pondering for a moment. "The word has been thrown around, but I don't really think so. I think I'm progressive and I'm kind of a maverick in a sense that I don't think I'm limited in potential. I don't think that anything is impossible.... But I don't have enough of those eccentricities to really pull off the genius role."

While his interest primarily is in acting, Snipes realizes that Black artists must take more control of filmmaking and tell their own stories. Being director and producer certainly takes the stress level up another notch. "It's a stressful life," he says of his career as it is. "It has benefits and perks, but it's highly stressful. The more you do and the more money you make, the more stress there is."

However, his spirituality keeps it all in check. "The name of my company, Amen lie, translates as `an unseen source of all creation,'" explains Snipes, who says he is an "African spiritualist" who grew up in Baptist churches and was a Muslim for 10 years.

"My spirit. I think that's the only way I've been able to survive."