After Dinner Speakers: Laurence Fishburne, Ross Noble, The Chi-Lites
Possessing as much flash, energy and intelligence as anyone currently in the game, Laurence Fishburne has certainly played his share of regulation black hoodlums and threats but also has benefited from color-blind casting as his tour de force Broadway performance as England's King Henry II (opposite Stockard Channing as his Eleanor) in a 1999 revival of "The Lion in Winter" attests. Fishburne has won both the Tony and Emmy awards. At age 11 he made regular appearances on TV soap opera One Life To Live. At 14 he spent over a year in the Philippines filming Apocalypse Now. In the 1980s he appeared on TV, as Cowboy Curtis on Pee Wee's Playhouse. His breakthrough movie was 1991's Boyz N the Hood, and in 1993 he was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Ike Turner in What's Love Got To Do With It?. In 1999 he appeared as Morpheus in the box office hit The Matrix.