Fame Is Easy, Acting Is Hard

By Josh Tyrangiel

A few days after Andre Benjamin--known musically as Andre 3000, the wig-wearing, Hey Ya!--singing half of the multiplatinum duo OutKast--moved to Los Angeles to become an actor, he ran into the film director John Singleton at a health-food restaurant. OutKast had contributed a song to the sound track of Singleton's Higher Learning, and the two talked amiably until Benjamin mentioned that he was trying to break into movies. "When he said, 'I really want to get into this acting thing,' I just smiled politely," says Singleton of the 2002 conversation. "I didn't take him seriously at all because frankly, every rapper in the world says that." As Benjamin recalls, "The conversation kind of stopped right there. John blew me off."

The dozens of rappers who have come to Hollywood over the past two decades have achieved undeniable commercial success, but only a few--Will Smith, Queen Latifah, Mos Def--are regularly called on to play something other than big-screen versions of themselves. Undoubtedly there are studio heads with limited conceptions of what those (mostly African-American) selves can be, yet there's also plenty of evidence to suggest that some rappers treat acting as an entitlement rather than a calling. "I've heard crazy stories about rappers who get big money to be in films who just don't show up for work," says Benjamin. "Then the studio spends $200,000 a day to keep the production afloat, so it's like paying double for them to come to work. That may be why rappers mostly get cast as rappers and crazy guys."

In order to separate himself from the pack, Benjamin, 30, has spent the past three years taking acting lessons and navigating through Hollywood's stereotypes about rappers. One measure of his success arrives this Friday. In Four Brothers, a revenge movie about a family of gun-toting, black and white, adopted brothers (based loosely on the 1965 John Wayne western The Sons of Katie Elder), Benjamin plays Jeremiah Mercer, the least trigger-happy character. The movie was directed by Singleton. "Dre came out here, worked hard and ate the whole humble pie," says Singleton. "Now things are heating up for him. I'm lucky to have him in this movie."

Benjamin acknowledges that his slice of humble pie might not have been that large. Unlike most other aspiring actors, he arrived in Los Angeles already famous--and rich enough to refuse roles that didn't interest him. On top of that, he says, "when I first moved, I didn't know I loved acting. I didn't even really know I liked it." His life change was motivated less by a passion for movies than by a frustration with music: he and partner Antwan (Big Boi) Patton were feuding over their future direction, and Benjamin felt enormous pressure to make hits. (The band has not announced its retirement nor any plans for a new album.) Like others before him, he took advantage of his celebrity to try something new. "I was already with the William Morris Agency for booking tours, and they have this whole music-movie transition team because, you know, everybody's doing movies now," he says wryly. "They assigned me to a transition person and were very casual, like, 'Yeah, maybe just talk to so-and-so while you're in the office.'"

The agency enrolled Benjamin in a sitcom-acting class with people literally just off the bus from Kansas. He had no interest in sitcoms and found "a few of the exercises silly," but even while doing improv skits in his classmates' run-down apartments, Benjamin recognized that acting gave him a different kind of creative freedom. "As a [musician], I have a set image, and no one wants to see me sad or anything. But in acting, you're allowed to be whatever. You can be embarrassed. You get a chance to cry. People expect you to be real."

After taking advanced classes and getting a private drama coach, Benjamin went to auditions. They did not go well. Once, in front of a group of Fox executives, he got so frazzled that he couldn't stop sweating. "I was supposed to be playing this ultra-cool guy," Benjamin says. "I was supposed to have a cigarette. I was totally not that person. The people in the room pretended that nothing unusual was going on, but when it was over--I remember Lisa Bonet was out in the hallway waiting on her turn--I ran into the bathroom and looked at my face, and I looked like I just climbed out of a pool. I pray the people at Fox have honor, man. I beg them, Destroy that tape."

His discomfort with auditions, Benjamin believes, was caused by a sense that he had to accomplish too much in too little time. "First," he says, "I had to make people believe that I'm not Andre 3000. Then I had to make people believe that I am this character. It created a lot of nervous tension." Perhaps, but Benjamin happily allowed his agents to use his renown to get auditions, so he could hardly take offense at the parts he was reading for ("Andre 3000 knock-offs, basically") or the burden of being seen as just another rapper.

The noblest solution might have been to stop using his fame. The smartest was to use his fame differently. Benjamin asked his agents to cold-call directors he respected to find out whether they would be willing to have lunch. More often than not, they were. "You just sit down at Starbucks or the Chateau Marmont--a lot of directors like to meet there--and start talking," says Benjamin. "Paul Thomas Anderson and I were tripping for hours," he says, recalling his meeting with the director of Boogie Nights and Magnolia. The informal conversations covered a lot of different ground, but Benjamin always made a point of explaining that Andre 3000--the platinum blond superfreak put together from the spare parts of George Clinton, Rick James and Prince--is nothing like Andre Benjamin, the person named Esquire's best-dressed man in the world. "Andre 3000 is wild and crazy. He's got the energy of a little kid," says Benjamin. "I'm totally opposite from that, way more calm. I have friends that call me Turtle."

After one such meeting, Benjamin was offered his first role, a few scenes as Josh Hartnett's friend in Hollywood Homicide. "I knew when he walked in the room he had the energy and charisma to handle the part," says director Ron Shelton. Shelton is the rare director who seeks out rappers ("There's a freedom, a looseness and a respect for the text I like," he says), but Benjamin still exceeded his expectations. "Andre sent me a note after the movie, thanking me. Honestly, it might be the first note I ever got. I sent him one back saying, 'Thank you. I hope I have a bigger part for you someday.' He was really prepared, a true professional."

In addition to meetings, Benjamin kept doing the boring stuff--working on the craft, reading and rereading scripts, being on time and prepared--and gradually more offers came in. He debated whether to take the role of cartoonish gangsta rapper Dabu in Be Cool but figured the script was satirical enough that no one would take his performance literally. (Several reviewers hailed him as the best thing in a bad movie.) He also started work on My Life in Idlewild, an avant-garde period musical for HBO built around OutKast songs. (Shot in 2004, Idlewild is scheduled to air next year.) "We wanted Ving Rhames in the movie," says Benjamin, "and the only way he'd do it was if he could get on the phone with me first. He says, 'I need to know: Are you serious about this? Because I've worked with rappers who come in and get high and blubber through lines, and I'm not going to let you waste my time.' I told him, 'I don't do dope, I take acting seriously, and I want to be great.'" Rhames took the part. "He's the only [actor] to confront me like that," says Benjamin. "I appreciated it, in a way. It beats people whispering."

Clips of Benjamin's performance in Idlewild as a Prohibition-era musician-undertaker circulated widely, and soon Guy Ritchie hired him to play a supporting role as a British-accented loan shark in this September's heist movie Revolver. Then Singleton came offering one of the leads in Four Brothers. "He's amazing in the Idlewild stuff I've seen," says Singleton, "but I did my research too." As Jeremiah, the only Mercer brother with a wife, kids, a job and a shred of respectability, Benjamin, who had just a week to prepare for the role, gives the most nuanced performance in the film--which means he gets to demonstrate a handful of emotions, as opposed to star Mark Wahlberg's two. Four Brothers isn't bad, but it is a movie in which bullets do a lot of the emoting.

By his own admission, Benjamin is still a ways from being a bankable star or an Academy Award threat. In the meantime, he continues to hone his skills, less out of a desire to be taken seriously now than for personal enjoyment. He keeps observations and notes about people he meets in daily life for use in future performances (on his BlackBerry he has a detailed file on the man who changed his water filter), and he has at least arrived in the position where he has quality choices to make. "Someone just sent me the script for Dreamgirls, with Beyonce," he says, "but I can't do it. The director wanted to meet, and I'd really love to work with this director [Bill Condon], but I just finished a musical, and it was a period piece. I don't want to get typecast." Especially after working so hard to avoid it.