That Guy!'s salute to Black History Month continues with a look at one of our favorite contemporary African-American character actors, Ving Rhames. A powerfully built six-footer with an intimidating mein and a penchant for playing bruisers and bad-asses, Rhames is in fact one of Hollywood's most notorious nice guys, a deeply spiritual and profoundly humanitarian person with a reputation in America's most backstabbing town for always being the touch for someone in need. Born with the substantially less intimidating Christian name of "Irving" in 1959, Rhames picked up his stage name not from the mean streets of his native Harlem, but from the decidedly non-superfly Stanley Tucci, a classmate of his at SUNY-Purchase. After formative experiences at the High School of Performing Arts and on Broadway, he launched a successful film career in the mid-1990s and has gone on to become something of a go-to guy for casting directors looking for a deft blend of intimidation and intelligence. (Which is not to say that his film career is nothing but bluster: he not only played a drag queen in a TV movie entitled Holiday Heart, but recently appeared in the excrable I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry, singing "I'm Every Woman" while naked in a locker room full of men.)
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