Anthony Mackie talks about breaking through barriers, rebuilding New Orleans, and why he hates Hollywood hype
Anthony Mackie is recounting the two things he told his agency when they first took him on. He strikes his hand on his thigh as he reiterates them: "One, the importance of being a black actor in this business. And two, the importance of theatre to an actor in this business."
They might seem comprehensible enough, but the 31-year-old is now no longer just a black actor who does theatre. After his acclaimed performance as Sergeant JT Sanborn, a bomb-disposal sergeant, in Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar-sweeping The Hurt Locker, he is now a movie star in an industry whose record on race is notoriously fraught. Vanity Fair came under fire last year for putting only white women on the cover for its annual Hollywood issue. This year, Mackie was the only black man to be included. No wonder that there are certain expectations placed on him.
The difficulty of negotiating these hit home last year, when he starred in a Broadway production of Martin McDonagh's new play, A Behanding in Spokane. He played Toby, a con artist attempting to sell a human hand to a white supremacist, played by Christopher Walken. Although the script was strewn with racial slurs, it was the stereotypical characterisation of Mackie's character that the critics really decried. Hilton Als, a black writer and the New Yorker's theatre critic, was among the incensed. "I don't know a single self-respecting black actor who wouldn't feel shame and fury while sitting through Martin McDonagh's new play," he wrote. "The sad fact is that, in order to cross over, most black actors of Mackie's generation must act black before they're allowed to act human."
"There are a lot of limitations and stigmas that are placed on young actors, specifically young black actors," Mackie concedes, "but I think there's a way of breaking out of that if you keep yourself open to the fold. You can't limit yourself. I've done a bunch of movies where they were written for white actors or they were written for just an actor."
Mackie was born in 1979 into a large, middle-class family in New Orleans. He describes his older brothers as "guardian angels". "Every time I nearly got kicked out of school or every time I got in trouble, they've always been there for me." As a kid, he wanted to be an engineer, like his eldest, award-winning, professor brother Calvin.
"I wanted to redesign New York," he smiles. "The design sucks, it's like a whole city built on stilts, first of all, and second of all, nothing works!" But then he enrolled at an after-school centre, the New Orleans Centre for Creative Arts, and read Shakespeare.
"You had this old white dude, 500 years ago, on the other side of the globe, writing about what was going on in my life," he says. "It's like, wow, these are kinda universal themes. It made me want to see the world." King Lear was the first he read and, he says, "it kind of changed my perspective on race, on the world, on everything".
After seeing Shakespeare in performance, he says: "I was tripped out by it. At that moment, I knew that I wanted to do theatre and I wanted to be an actor. And this was way before movies and shit like that ? I never thought I would be where I am in my career today. So, you know," he chuckles, "it kinda worked out."
Bigelow, the director who cast him in The Hurt Locker, tells me: "What caught my attention about Anthony in the first place was his easy magnetism, an effortless charisma and nimble intellect. The character of Sanborn required both gravitas and vulnerability which seemed almost effortless for Anthony." Lou Bellamy, who directed Mackie in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at the Kennedy Centre in Washington, complains: "I've since tried on several occasions to lure him back to the stage, but his movie commitments have made it impossible. One can easily see why he is in such great demand ? there's always a bit of danger in the performance."
On screen, he has a shrewd intensity but in person he's expansive and jovial. He laughs a lot ? a booming, body-shaking guffaw at odds with his delicate features, wary eyes and the tough set to his jaw. Sitting on the 30th floor of the Mandarin Oriental there's a spectacular view of New York at his feet and, reclining languidly in his chair, he's like a man confident in his destiny as a star.
"I've always thought that each individual was fated for something great," he says, "but it's our free will that fucks it up along the way. The choices that we make through our lives, the people who intersect us on our path kind of change what our fated destiny is. So some of us are lucky enough for the choices that we make to keep us on our path."
Fate is the central theme to his latest film, The Adjustment Bureau. Starring Matt Damon, it's a big-budget movie, based on a Philip K Dick story, in which people's destinies are decided, and orchestrated, by bureau agents in suits and trilbies. Mackie plays Harry Mitchell, an agent tasked with keeping Damon to his ordained "plan" and away from love interest Emily Blunt. The film's premise may lack credibility, but Mackie certainly doesn't: he's excellent at allowing his character's compassion to simmer beneath his professional composure.
The best thing about the film was shooting in New York, he says, and that in itself felt fateful. He recalls filming a scene in a bar in Red Hook, Brooklyn. "So I go outside and look around and I'm like, I used to live on this block. And I look up and sure enough my very first apartment was above the bar we were shooting in. I didn't even recognise it because the neighbourhood had changed so much. Everything that's happened in my life led me to this point. I'm back to my very first, awful apartment. I was, like, wow, I've come full circle."
Mackie was noticed 10 years ago, while studying at the Juilliard School in New York. He played the rapper Tupac Shakur in a student production of Up Against the Wind, which transferred to the New York Theatre Workshop. Critics lavished praise and he landed a part in Eminem's film, 8 Mile. More film roles followed, but, for Mackie, theatre is still the most powerful medium. "Theatre has that tangible aspect that film does not have," he says, with finality. "You see 'em, they're real people, right there!"
What would have made him a good engineer is also what makes him a great actor: his zeal for hands-on, physical engagement. When he's not acting, he's at work on his bar in Brooklyn. He's building it himself and that apparently keeps him sane. "Every time I get mad, I grab my hammer and make a bookshelf or something."
But he builds a role as thoroughly as he does those bookcases. For the Clint Eastwood-directed boxing film Million Dollar Baby, that meant getting beaten up by Morgan Freeman. "He kicked my ass!" he howls, in amused outrage. "He punched me. In. The. Face. He's a mean old dude."
But Freeman doled out advice along with the punches. Mackie was torn between an "awful, awful film? for a bucket of money", or a play "for 300 bucks a week". Freeman said, do the play. "'When Hollywood wants you they'll come get you,' he said. 'And when they come get you they'll pay for you. But right now, work on your craft.' And I did the play and subsequently every job I take I think back to that. I've got those words printed out and stuck on my wall."
Hollywood certainly wants him now. Future projects include biopics of Olympic athlete Jesse Owens and jazz cornettist Buddy Bolden. Does he feel any sense of obligation to bring great black stories to the screen?
"I do, I do. I definitely don't want to be perceived as a damn fool. The thing about it is that my family's very important to me and the way people perceive my family name is very important to me. That's the way it's been since I was a child ? I was always known as Willie Mackie's son. So, if I do something stupid, not only does it make me look stupid, it makes my dad look stupid."
His father needn't worry. Mackie admits that now, after The Hurt Locker, he's at a point "where people know the type of stuff I'm interested in and the type of stuff I'm not interested in". He has also, as he puts it, "realised what my path was and what my path wasn't". After filming, he stayed on in the Middle East for several weeks to travel. He calls it "a ground-shaking, spiritual experience". When he came back, "I just didn't get it", "it" being the fame side of things. "I didn't get why this was so important to everybody. I just don't understand how people can get so caught up in having their picture taken."
He solved this attack of disillusionment in a typically practical way. "I loaded up my truck, I moved back to New Orleans, built a house." He found going back to the devastation after hurricane Katrina predictably difficult. "The main levee bridge was in my back yard. We lost more than 50 homes in one neighbourhood. And the way Fema [Federal Emergency Management Agency] and the insurance companies have handled it is outrageous. I don't see it as a presidential problem, I don't see it as a governmental problem, I see it as a human being problem. You don't treat people like that."
His prevailing emotion, though, is pride. "Every time I go home now, I feel it with everybody who's stayed and rebuilt, the magnitude of we did it. Even when the federal government fucked us, we did it on our own. We're in a position where we can say we did it without your help, so kiss my ass."
He's got some advice for Obama, too. "Right now, he's become the great diplomat. He tries to make everyone happy, but I'm, like, president, sometimes you gotta tell people to fuck off. It's about time for him to stand up and just go real black for one interview and say, 'If you keep fucking with me, we gon' have problems.'"
Mackie is devoted to straight-talking, which is perhaps why "this nebulous idea of celebrity" and getting lost in it is so alarming to him. He says he stays away from the public eye. It's rare, he says, that he gets recognised as himself. Instead, he claims that he's mistaken for his friend, Jamie Hector of The Wire, on average "once a day".
And do you go along with it?
"Yes! I sign autographs, I take pictures, everything. I mean, I've read blogs where it's, like, "Oh, I met Jamie, he's the nicest guy in the world" and I'm like, 'Yes he is, ha ha ha!'"
Perhaps he's too nice to cope with Hollywood and all that it brings. He better enjoy the mistaken identity while he still can ? it probably won't last much longer.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/feb/27/anthony-mackie-actor-interview
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