Wesley Snipes

Training: the Bronx, dance and the dojo

Wesley Snipes was born on 31 July 1962 in Orlando, Florida, and grew up in the Bronx, New York. He started martial arts at 12, in 1974, and never stopped. He holds a 5th dan in Shotokan karate and a 2nd dan in hapkido, the Korean art of joint locks and throws. He also studied capoeira under Mestre Jelon Vieira, one of the first to teach the Brazilian art in the United States, then kung fu at the USA Shaolin Temple in New York, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, kickboxing and Filipino arnis. Alongside this he attended Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts, the school of Fame, where he studied dance, and went on to a drama degree at the State University of New York at Purchase.

Early career: from Michael Jackson's video to New Jack City

Spotted by an agent at 23, he made his film debut in Wildcats (1986) with Goldie Hawn, then in Streets of Gold (1986), a boxing film in which he plays a young boxer coached by a former Soviet champion. In 1987 he was the gang leader who faces off with Michael Jackson in the Bad video, directed by Martin Scorsese. Spike Lee cast him in Mo' Better Blues (1990) and Jungle Fever (1991), and his role as drug lord Nino Brown in New Jack City (1991) made him a household name.

Key films: bare-handed action

Passenger 57 (1992), in which he plays an airline security expert fighting hijackers, launched his action career and let him fight on screen with his own techniques for the first time. The following year he was Simon Phoenix, the bleached-blond villain of Demolition Man opposite Sylvester Stallone, and a police officer in Rising Sun alongside Sean Connery, with martial arts scenes set in Los Angeles' Japanese business world. Drop Zone (1994), Money Train (1995), Murder at 1600 (1997) and U.S. Marshals (1998) followed. One Night Stand (1997) won him the Volpi Cup for best actor at the Venice Film Festival.

In 1998 Blade changed the scale. He played Marvel's half-human, half-vampire hunter and produced the film through his company Amen-Ra Films. He had a hand in designing the fights, which blend sword work, karate kicks and hapkido locks, at a time when Hollywood was discovering Hong Kong choreography. Blade grossed more than 130 million dollars worldwide and paved the way for the Marvel films of the 2000s. Blade II, directed by Guillermo del Toro in 2002, pushed the fights further with Donnie Yen's stunt team; Blade: Trinity closed the trilogy in 2004. In 2002, Walter Hill's Undisputed cast him as a prison boxing champion opposite Ving Rhames, in a restrained performance that boxing-film fans still cite. The Art of War (2000) and its sequel round out the period.

Comeback and legacy

His career paused between December 2010 and April 2013 while he served a federal prison sentence for tax offences. He returned with The Expendables 3 (2014) alongside Stallone, then found one of his best roles as D'Urville Martin in Dolemite Is My Name (2019), praised by critics. In 2021 he reunited with Eddie Murphy in Coming 2 America, and in 2024 he returned as Blade in Deadpool & Wolverine, twenty years after Trinity, earning a Guinness World Record.

Snipes is one of the actors who brought martial arts into 1990s Hollywood action cinema, and the first Black lead of a major superhero franchise. A practitioner will recognise the Shotokan base in his fights, with side kicks and long stances, and the wrist and elbow controls of hapkido. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and still trains, as he has shown in Brazilian jiu-jitsu videos.