Anthony Mackie Shows You How to Layer Up Right
Anthony Mackie is way overqualified to be telling pot jokes.
And yet, here he is, decked out in an ugly sweater and a Santa hat preening beside Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the poster for The Night Before, a raunchy, drug-fuelled Christmas comedy that is, let’s just say, a departure from his usual work. Which, before we even get to his professional career, started with Shakespeare. That was his first taste of acting, in high school, where his teachers liked to stage ridiculously ambitious productions with budding talents.
“We did King Lear. We were all terrible, but we had the best teachers who always taught us the classics, and pushed us to do them. I played Edmund. And there’s a scene at the end where Edmond dies. So opening night I’m doing that on stage, and these two girls in my class scream out from the audience: ‘Anthony! No!’ That’s when I knew I wanted to become an actor.”
And so, as happens with talented people, a few years later he was at Julliard, and a few years after that he was doing Shakespeare on Broadway and booking film roles, playing Tupac Shakur and Martin Luther King Jr.