After you have missed the mark in 2017, Mahershala Ali has found grace in the eyes of the british Academy of arts of television and film. Sunday night, the actor, who turns 44 years old on Saturday, has won the Bafta for best actor in a supporting role for Green Book in which he plays a pianist in a black Gift Shirley.
” READ ALSO – First Oscar for Mahershala Ali of Moonlight, the quiet force of the film.
Sacred to the Oscars two years ago for his score of the dealer in Moonlight , the actor asserts itself today as one of the sure values of hollywood cinema. Here are three things to know about this denizen of the great supporting roles.
A supporting actor in the foreground
Mahershala Ali has played the characters of the second plan for fifteen years. It has particular insight in E quaint Story of Benjamin Button, Predators, The Place Beyond The Pines or Hunger Games : Mockingjay . In addition to these roles of the shadow, he is shown occasionally since the beginning of the 2000s in tv series like Lie To Me , Law & Order and Treme . The comedian stands out in 2013 in the series on Netflix House of Cards , where it plays Remy Danton, a lobbyist and former chief of cabinet of the character played by Kevin Spacey.
” READ ALSO – Oscar-2017: Moonlight, the childhood of Barry Jenkins celebrated
It was in 2017 that the world discovers the extent of the talent of this actor to be discreet. He slips into the shoes of Juan, the drug dealer in the film of Barry Jenkins ‘ Moonlight . Thanks to his performance, Ali won the oscar for best actor in a supporting role and becomes the first muslim to win the statuette.
A detective from hell
He must believe that all this time spent in the shadow of the first roles, he has been enough. For the third season of True Detective , broadcast on OCS City, the actor has convinced the showrunner Nic Pizzolato to rewrite the script in order to give more place to her character. “Originally, the main character was white, and the other cop was black. (…) I would have been able to play this second role, but I told myself that I had done it all my career,” he explained to Variety in a cross interview with John David Washington.
” READ ALSO – True Detective: a third season of rebirth
Ali then went to visit his cousins, in order to lay hands on photos of his grand-father, a police officer in Arkansas in the 1960s. The actor was then sent these pictures to the creator of the show. “I said to him: “You see, it was at the time, a black in the police”. I told Pizzolato that her story would focus on the character black. He thought for a few days and said to me: “Do it, I am leaving”.
Player music lover
In Green Book : on the roads of the south, road-movie related signed Peter Farrelly, the actor interprets the pianist Don Shirley during a tour in the southern United States. To prepare for his role, Mahershala Ali received piano lessons from the composer Kris Bowers that he has followed during the three months leading up to the shooting.
“Mahersahala always said: “When you cross a ballet dancer in the subway, you know that he is a ballet dancer because it stands as a ballet dancer”. Ali wanted to have the air of a pianist, even when he was not playing the piano”, recently said Bowers, who doubled the actor on some of the scenes, Vulture .
” READ ALSO – Green Book. On the roads of the South : mister Shirley and her driver
Real music lover, Mahershala Ali has planned to start in music in parallel to his career as an actor. In 2007, he released a rap album entitled Curb Side Service under the name Prince Ali. As a great lover of the genre, he said he is a fan of hip-hop of the 1990s and admires the likes of Rakim, Nas, Ghostface Killah, or Gang Starr. Moreover, he is married to actress and musician Amatus-Sami Karim.
● Listen to The Majors , Prince Ali (with Casual, Planet Asia and Keith Murray):
