E-mail a friendLaurence Fishburne
airdate December 9, 2005
Laurence Fishburne has an impressive list of stage, TV and film credits and the honors to match—Emmys, a Tony and an Oscar nod. He made his acting debut at age 10 on the New York stage and gave a breakthrough performance in the film, Boyz N the Hood, going on to become the first African American to play Othello on screen. Fishburne returns to Broadway for the first time in nine years, starring as Justice Thurgood Marshall in the one-man show, Thurgood. He can also be seen in the feature drama, 21.
Laurence Fishburne
Tavis: All this week, we're looking back at some of my favorite guests and conversations of this year. Tonight Laurence Fishburne. When did you develop this love for motorcycles that I didn't know existed?
Laurence Fishburne: Well, I had the good fortune of learning how to ride properly in Atlanta when I made "Fled" with Stephen Baldwin in 1995. I was instantly smitten with the machines and I've been riding and, God bless it, I've been riding safely for ten years now and I just enjoy it.
Tavis: What do you -- it's a silly question, but I'm just trying to -- some people like to -- John Travolta flies airplanes.
Fishburne: Right, right.
Tavis: Paul Newman races cars. You like riding motorcycles. What do you get out of that? I know you love the machines, but what do you love them for?
Fishburne: I get about an hour and a half of anonymity where I'm just a guy on a motorcycle.
Tavis: That's enough too?
Fishburne: You know, a lot of times, an hour and a half, sometimes two hours of anonymity can sustain me for, you know, a year if it's the right two hours, you know. I just did voice work for Tiger Woods' life story. This is one of those ways in which you use the iconic thing and you embrace it. You know, Michael Jordan loved Morpheus as a character and asked for me to narrate his IMAX movie. Tiger Woods did the same thing. So that's where you go, okay, I can use thing, embrace it, you know, it's the quality of my voice that people appreciate and it's one of my gifts, so I can't ignore that. But at the same time, you know, I know that both of them like to dive. I want to dive with them. When I get to actually sit down and meet Tiger and maybe spend a minute with Mr. Jordan, I would love to go, "Hey, let's go diving." Can you imagine diving with Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods and not having to say anything?
Tavis: Yeah (laughter).
Fishburne: No one can ask you for your autograph and we can't even talk to each other.
Tavis: Yeah (laughter).
Fishburne: That kind of anonymity? Thirty minutes like that? Those thirty minutes would carry me for three years.
Tavis: To the point of you not just being blessed with this wonderful Thespian flair that you have, but you do have this voice. James Earl Jones, great actor, also had the voice. What have you learned over the years about this instrument that you have and what it has done to help you elevate your game? A lot of people just don't have that.
Fishburne: Well, it's always been a part of my sort of arsenal, my bag of tricks, if you will. I have a very good ear and I can impersonate people and I can do different accents and voices quite easily and the actors that I appreciated as a young man were all people who had really beautiful speaking instruments. You know, one of my dearest friends and mentors is Roscoe Lee Brown who has the most beautiful voice --
Tavis: -- it don't come much better than that, yeah.
Fishburne: -- in the world. The most beautiful voice in the world belongs to my friend, Roscoe Brown. You know, James Earl, Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Richard Harris, there are actors who use their vocal instrument very well and I just, for some reason, paid attention to that and I've tried to use mine well as well.
Tavis: Let me ask a very impolitic question, but now is as good a time as any. When I first met you -- it's a dramatic shift of gears here -- when I first met you years ago, I've since learned being in this business to not judge people. I work really hard every day at not judging. It's a tough thing to not judge people, but I work really hard at that.
Fishburne: It's important, it's important.
Tavis: When I first met you, though, I was so excited to meet you. But when I met you, I thought, wow, he's really kind of stand-offish. I was all geeked about this man, just your style is kind of -- you know. I was kind of like, man. I kind of walked away a little let down.
Fishburne: Oh, I'm sorry I disrespected you.
Tavis: No, no. I'm not trying to embarrass you. As the black preacher says, "Stay with me. I'm going somewhere with this."
Fishburne: Okay, beautiful.
Tavis: I'm going somewhere with this.
Fishburne: Let's go.
Tavis: All right. So I met you and I'm thinking, man, this guy Laurence is a little stand-offish. But I saw you again a year or two later when I met you again and got a little different vibe, so over the years I've come to learn a bit more about your style. But do you ever think about -- does it matter to you how people view you when they walk away from you? Because all you can be is who you are, but you're just not --
Fishburne: You know, ultimately, Tavis, what that is, my stand-offishness, my aloofness, my --
Tavis: -- that's a better word, aloofness.
Fishburne: My aloofness, my lofty thing, I'm shy, Tavis. I'm a tremendously shy individual and it takes me a while to really get comfortable with people. I love what I do and I love people. I love people. My work is the way in which I express my love for people and, when people are excited to see you because you're famous, it's them showing love for you, but my shyness is just who I am. I'm very shy. So even though somebody's really happy to see me and they're like, "Hey, hey", I'm always like yeah because I'm shy. I don't know you. I'm glad you're happy to see me --
Tavis: -- but I don't know you (laughter).
Fishburne: You know, until we sit down and we break bread and we really, you know what I mean? I'm over here, man, I don't know you. I love you, I love you, but I need a minute and people misread me. They think I'm arrogant, they think I'm lofty. I'm shy.
Tavis: I say that only because I wanted to make a point that I did misread you and I apologize for misreading you. How do you get over that? That is the irony here. And you know where I'm going with this. As shy as you are as an individual, you give all of this and then some on the screen.
Fishburne: That's what I do. That's not who I am. That's what I do.
Tavis: Right, okay.
Fishburne: That's what I do and I do that for people. My work is not for me. I got a gift and I am a communicator and I communicate through the craft of acting, through writing, through storytelling. That's what I do, but Laurence, the individual, is a very shy, very sensitive, very internal person and I won't ever get over that. It's part of my duality. I'm a human being. I'm a lot of different things, so I'm always going to have a little bit of that. I've had to learn how to do this, for example. I mean, even when I was a kid, people would ask me for my autograph. I was never really into it, but I realized that at some point I was going to have to do it sometime. So I practiced signing my autograph so I could at least do it quickly when I was able to do it, you know?
Tavis: I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Well, thanks for watching tonight and thank you for your support. That's our show for tonight. You can catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local radio listings. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles. Thanks for watching and, as always, keep the faith.
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