Look Out! Terrence Howard's About - Brief Article - Interview

Interview, Nov, 1999 by Gary Dauphin

The recent movie The Best Man has a terrific ensemble cast, but when people come out of screenings they can only talk about one actor - Terrence Howard. He's about to rocket

Terrence Howard may act, play about six instruments and know enough about physics to have earned a master's degree, but just now what he's most enjoying is being bad. Unlike the standard array of pretty boys, thugs, and would-be pimps that patrol Tinseltown's margins, Howard has been making a career out of taking the usual suspects offered black actors and imploding them from within, his personal brand of big-screen pathology explained not with nods to the cliched hard-knock streets, but to particularly biblical spectacles - the preacher who glories in going wrong, the angel who eagerly falls. Howard has done the up-and-corner's sitcom shuffle and his big break technically came as a misunderstood kid in Mr. Holland's Opus (1995), but the roles that have made him a newly hot commodity are drawn from what seems like a shadow filmography: a crazed Vietnam vet turned pulpit hustler in the downbeat Dead Presidents (1995), a cagily confused child-murderer on last season's NYPD Blue, and now Quentin, the slickly demonic instigator from the black-love flick The Best Man.

Depending on his mood, the well-spoken and fast-laughing Howard explains his facility with not-very-nice men in different ways, talking craft here and referencing a multifaceted artistic childhood there, all before nonchalantly mentioning that he watched his father kill a man one Christmas Eve over exactly whose kid was next in line to sit on a store Santa's lap. The detail and delivery are pure Howard, the line between impulsive concession and coldly considered media savvy typically blurred. The only thing that's clear is that Terrence Howard isn't just good at messing with audiences and interviewers' heads; he likes doing it, too.

GARY DAUPHIN: Everyone who's seen Best Man keys in on your character, Quentin. Could you tell me a little bit about him?

TERRENCE HOWARD: Quentin is that young rich kid who's not satisfied. He's gone through a period of trying to tear down his life and now he's just going to watch, see what happens. But he's truthful. He's half-demon, half-angel, because he knows the truth. He could fix things, but he chooses to let life handle its own self instead.

GD: He's definitely a trickster, but on the other hand he seems wounded.

TH: Somebody has hurt him in a bad way. I can relate. I've done some pretty bad things in my life, and I hope not to do them anymore. I'm sitting here in a hotel trying my hardest not to do them now.

GD: [long pause] OK. Watching Quentin on screen, and talking to you, there's a definite sense that both of you enjoy playing with people's minds. How much of you is in Quentin or vice versa?

TH: I'm not sure. I know I can't separate myself from him anymore. He's always going to be a piece of me. Just the same as [crazy Vietnam vet] Cowboy from Dead Presidents will always be there. And the psychotic from NYPD Blue.

GD: There's this kind of weird buzz around you fight now. You're like the black prince of darkness.

TH: [laughs] Is that what they call me, the black prince of darkness? OK, as long as they want me to come out and be the angel, too, because every prince of darkness started off as an angel. Very few people say, "Wow, you were so wonderful in Mr. Holland Opus." They say, "I remember you in that." Then they say, "Boy, I knew that guy in Dead Presidents." And they liked watching him get beat up.

GD: Does that bother you?

TH: It's all right. People like what they like. I like it from the back. I'm speaking a little more candidly here because I don't want to be misinterpreted as to who I am or what I'm about. I'm not the nicest guy in the world, but I'm definitely honest. If there is any part of Quentin that's a part of me, it's that brutal honesty. But I'll play those kind of characters, mostly because I don't see anybody else who's able to do it. I look forward to somebody who can come and relieve me.

GD: You talk about acting in terms of challenge and power a lot.

TH: It's emotional warfare. I'm pulling no punches.

GD: So what's up next?

TH: I'm about to do this movie called Sextet with Djimon Hounsou and Omar Epps. It's about a hip-hop band. The character that I'm playing is gay - in-the-closet gay. And he likes to abuse young men. He's not just having sex with them; he's doing it in a very abusive, debased manner. But he's a man and when I say that, I say it in the sense that most people think when you're gay, you're not a man. He's a man who happens to like boys. Sextet's a challenge because of the things I'll have to deal with and come to grips with emotionally. Am I homophobic? Can I really portray someone who's gay and say I've never had those feelings? How do I approach that and how do I surrender to it? And then there's being an epileptic.

GD: He's an epileptic, too?

TH: Yeah. I'm going to have seizures. I've never done that. I may not get it on the first take, but before it's over, before the day is done, I'll have it.