Mahershala Ali

Mahershala Ali (born February 16, 1974, Oakland, California, U.S.) is an American actor who rose to prominence in the 2010s and won an Academy Award for his moving and nuanced performance as the fatherly drug dealer Juan in the film Moonlight (2016).

Ali grew up in Hayward, California. His mother was a Baptist minister, and his father left the family when Ali was a toddler to pursue a career as a dancer. Ali won a basketball scholarship to attend St. Mary’s College of California. While there, he began participating in poetry slams and appeared in a production of the play Spunk (based on stories by Zora Neale Hurston). This experience awoke in him an ambition to become an actor. After graduating (1996) with a bachelor’s degree in communications, Ali apprenticed with the California Shakespeare Festival and then enrolled in New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (M.F.A., 2000). While studying there, he converted to the Aḥmadiyyah sect of Islam and changed his last name to Ali.

After graduation, he was cast as the lead in the small independent film Making Revolution (2003). In addition, he won plaudits for his portrayal of boxer Jack Johnson in a 2000 production of The Great White Hope at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Ali spent a season (2001–02) as a cast member of the television show Crossing Jordan. He continued performing in guest roles on TV shows and was a cast member of the 2004–07 sci-fi TV series The 4400.

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Ali appeared in the popular movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Other notable roles included a recurring part (2011–12) in the well-received TV drama Treme and the character Boggs, an ally of Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) in the movies The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1 (2014) and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 2 (2015). Moreover, he released the rap albums Corner Ensemble (2006) and Curb Side Service (2007) under the name Prince Ali.

Ali gained wide and favourable attention for his portrayal (2013–16) of the political operator Remy Danton in the popular Netflix series House of Cards. In 2016 he was nominated for an Emmy Award for that role. He also won praise for his performance as a former slave who becomes a political activist in the film Free State of Jones (2016). In addition to his award-winning role in Moonlight, Ali in 2016 played the villainous Cornell (“Cottonmouth”) Stokes in the superhero series Luke Cage and the love interest of mathematician Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson) in the movie Hidden Figures (2016). He later received a second Oscar for best supporting actor for his performance in Green Book (2018), the story of an unlikely friendship between an African American classical pianist and the working-class bouncer he hires to drive him on a tour of the American South in the 1960s.

In the acclaimed animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), Ali voiced the title character’s uncle. He also successfully lobbied for the lead role of the television series True Detective, portraying a police officer investigating the disappearance of two children in the show’s third season (2019). For his performance Ali received his second Emmy nomination. In 2020 he appeared in the TV series Ramy, and his portrayal of a Sufi leader earned him another Emmy nod. Ali later starred in Swan Song (2021), a sci-fi movie about a dying man who, in order to protect his loved ones, keeps his condition a secret and contemplates cloning himself.