EARLY IN MY TEENAGE YEARS, WHEN MOVIES and books were pretty much my life, it began to occur to me that what was missing from these experiences was depictions of me as a person. When Sidney Poitier came along, I began to feel better about movies. However, there was nothing historical that challenged the status quo.
When I was called to talk about acting in the 1989 movie, I almost blew my top. It showed the country in a state of civil war, fighting against itself and ultimately needing every