Roger Guenveur Smith

About Roger Guenveur Smith

Who is it?: Actor, Writer, Soundtrack
Birth Day: July 27, 1955
Birth Place:  Berkeley, California, United States
Residence: Los Angeles, California New York City
Occupation: Actor, director, writer
Years active: 1988–present
Spouse(s): Carolina (divorced), LeTania Kirkland
Children: 4

Roger Guenveur Smith

Roger Guenveur Smith was born on July 27, 1955 in  Berkeley, California, United States, is Actor, Writer, Soundtrack. Roger Guenveur Smith is an internationally acclaimed actor, writer, and director who has created a prolific body of work on stage and screen.He adapted his Obie Award-winning solo performance of A Huey P. Newton Story into a Peabody Award-winning telefilm, directed by his longtime colleague Spike Lee, with whom he continues to collaborate in a relationship which is unparalleled in the American cinema.For Lee's Oscar-nominated Do The Right Thing, Smith improvised the stuttering hero, Smiley, after his debut as fraternity pledge Yoda in Lee's first studio film, school daze. The eclectic range of characters expanded with a Russian roulette-playing gangster in Malcolm X, a guitar-playing cop in Get On The Bus , the street philosopher Big Time Willie in He Got Game, a hardnose detective in Summer Of Sam, and an opportunistic insurance salesman in Chi-Raq.Also among Smith's recent credits are The Birth Of A Nation, and Bitch, which have achieved distinction in three consecutive Sundance Festivals, and the acclaimed indies Mooz-Lum, and Better Mus' Come, in which he plays the Prime Minister of Jamaica.Smith's astonishing range is further demonstrated in the cult classics Deep Cover and King Of New York, Eve's Bayou, Hamlet, All About The Benjamins, and American Gangster, for which he was nominated for the Screen Actors' Guild Award. On HBO, Smith has starred in Steven Soderbergh's K Street, Oz, and Unchained Memories: Readings From The Slave Narrative.Before entering the Yale School of Drama ( into a class which included Angela Bassett, Charles S. Dutton, and John Turturro) Smith studied history, earning an undergraduate degree in American Studies at Occidental College.He has continued to combine his interests through an ever-evolving stage repertoire which includes Frederick Douglass Now, Christopher Columbus 1992, The Watts Towers Project, In Honor Of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Two Fires, Patriot Act, Juan and John, The End Of Black History Month, Who Killed Bob Marley?, Iceland, and, with Mark Broyard, Inside The Creole Mafia, a "not too dark comedy."Smith's work is frequently developed through intense archival immersion and improvisation, a process which informs his performing history workshop, which he currently directs at Cal Arts.Katori Hall's The Mountaintop, Steven Berkoff's Agamemnon, and the Bessie and Ovation Award-winning Radio Mambo, are also among his directorial credits.Smith frequently collaborates with composer/videographer Marc Anthony Thompson (Chocolate Genius Inc.) and presents his work at the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles.Smith was born in Berkeley, and raised in Los Angeles, where he resides with his wife, the writer LeTania Kirkland, and their three children. He has an adult daughter from a former marriage.
Roger Guenveur Smith is a member of Actor

Does Roger Guenveur Smith Dead or Alive?

As per our current Database, Roger Guenveur Smith is still alive (as per Wikipedia, Last update: May 10, 2020).

🎂 Roger Guenveur Smith - Age, Bio, Faces and Birthday

Currently, Roger Guenveur Smith is 68 years, 8 months and 1 days old. Roger Guenveur Smith will celebrate 69rd birthday on a Saturday 27th of July 2024. Below we countdown to Roger Guenveur Smith upcoming birthday.

Days
Hours
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Popular As Roger Guenveur Smith
Occupation Actor
Age 68 years old
Zodiac Sign Leo
Born July 27, 1955 ( Berkeley, California, United States)
Birthday July 27
Town/City  Berkeley, California, United States
Nationality United States

🌙 Zodiac

Roger Guenveur Smith’s zodiac sign is Leo. According to astrologers, people born under the sign of Leo are natural born leaders. They are dramatic, creative, self-confident, dominant and extremely difficult to resist, able to achieve anything they want to in any area of life they commit to. There is a specific strength to a Leo and their "king of the jungle" status. Leo often has many friends for they are generous and loyal. Self-confident and attractive, this is a Sun sign capable of uniting different groups of people and leading them as one towards a shared cause, and their healthy sense of humor makes collaboration with other people even easier.

🌙 Chinese Zodiac Signs

Roger Guenveur Smith was born in the Year of the Goat. Those born under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Goat enjoy being alone in their thoughts. They’re creative, thinkers, wanderers, unorganized, high-strung and insecure, and can be anxiety-ridden. They need lots of love, support and reassurance. Appearance is important too. Compatible with Pig or Rabbit.

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Biography/Timeline

1955

Smith was born in 1955 in Berkeley, California, the son of Helen Guenveur, a dentist, and Sherman Smith, a judge. He attended Loyola high school in Los Angeles, Occidental College (American Studies) in Los Angeles and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where he successfully auditioned for the Drama School, switching from his pursuit of a graduate degree in History. Additionally, Smith studied at the Keskidee Arts Centre in London, England.

1965

Juan and John, written and performed by Guenveur Smith, is based on baseball's most famous fight--San Francisco Giants pitcher Juan Marichal clubbing Johnny Roseboro of the Los Angeles Dodgers with his bat during a 1965 battle for the pennant at Candlestick Park—which traumatized the Playwright as a child.

1990

In film, Smith has collaborated with Spike Lee on several works. He has appeared in films such as School Daze, Do the Right Thing, King of New York, Deep Cover, Panther, Malcolm X, Poetic Justice, Get On The Bus, Eve's Bayou, He Got Game, and Summer of Sam. During the 1990s, he had a recurring role on A Different World.

1996

In 1996, he starred in the self-written and produced A Huey P. Newton Story, a one-man theatre performance based on the life of Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton, for which Smith received an Obie Award, a performance was later filmed by Spike Lee and released in 2001.

2003

In addition to his performances in major studio productions, Smith continues to work in and support independent film projects. In 2003, he had a starring role in the Steven Soderbergh/George Clooney TV series K-Street on HBO. Also in 2003, Smith read in the HBO documentary, Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives; the film, based on interviews conducted by the WPA in the 1930s with formerly enslaved African Americans, is a compilation of slave narratives with actors emulating the original conversation with the interviewer. Smith was also the voice of Bao-Dur in the video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II The Sith Lords. He portrayed a corrupt detective in the martial arts/crime film Fist of the Warrior, alongside Ho-Sung Pak and Sherilyn Fenn. Smith starred with Laurence Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum in the 1992 film Deep Cover. He also played a villain in All About the Benjamins (2002) with Ice Cube. In 2000, he portrayed Agent Screck in the first installment of the Final Destination horror films. In 2006, he played the main villain in the straight-to-video actioner Mercenary for Justice, opposite Steven Seagal. Smith was in the 2007 film American Gangster with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, in which he played the role of "Nate", Frank Lucas's army connection in Vietnam. Most recently he played the role of "Isaiah" in the 2016 film The Birth of a Nation, a film about the life of Nat Turner.

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