Born the only child of a corrections officer (Laurence Fishburne Sr.) and a schoolteacher (Hattie Fishburne), little Larry moved from his native state of Georgia to Brooklyn, New York, where he and his mother lived following her divorce from his father. His English professor godfather recognized his emotive abilities early on, as did his mother, who forthwith began shuttling him around to various auditions at the New Federal Theatre and the Negro Ensemble Theater in Manhattan. Her persistent stage-mothering soon bore fruit, first in the form of small plums in theatrical and television productions, and ultimately, with a peach of a role as a boy who witnesses the fatal shooting of his basketball-player hero in the 1975 feature film Cornbread, Earl and Me. Not long after he landed this promising debut gig, Fishburne fibbed his way into an audition for Coppola's star-studded war drama, and succeeded in walking away with the part of a young, naive Navy gunner. How could the pubescent Fishburne have known at the time that the film's projected three-month-long shoot would stretch into a nearly two-year stint "hanging around in the jungle, smoking reefer, and drinking beer" with Dennis Hopper? Considering the cause célèbre the experience turned out to be, it was not a surprise when Fishburne dropped acid, painted his hair yellow, his face red, and his eye sockets blue to crash a cop-show audition in L.A. Also not surprising were his repeated casting calls for token black thug parts. But aside from the predictable stereotyping pitfalls of the African-American male actor in Hollywood that impeded his initial post-Apocalypse efforts, Fishburne managed to keep busy enough, and slowly but surely, he matured into more versatile and challenging roles.

After a few more collaborations with Coppola (1983's Rumble Fish, 1984's The Cotton Club, and 1987's Gardens of Stone), Fishburne switched tracks to play the recurring comedic role of "Cowboy Curtis" on the offbeat children's TV show Pee-Wee's Playhouse (starting in 1986). He married casting agent Hajna Moss in 1985, and they had a couple of kids (son Langston in 1987, daughter Montana in 1991). He acquitted himself well in film roles originally slated for white actors, in 1990's King of New York (as a wacked-out hit man) and in Michael Apted's 1991 courtroom drama Class Action (as a legal assistant).

Fishburne finally reaped the kind of critical and popular acclaim required to boost a person onto the bona fide star tier with his affecting performance as a devoted but stern father intent on protecting his son from gang violence in Oscar-nominated director John Singleton's 1991 drama Boyz N the Hood (he knew the then neophyte director from his Pee-Wee's Playhouse days, when Singleton was still a student and worked as a security guard on the set). He scored a Tony the following year for his performance as charming ex-con Sterling Johnson in a Broadway production of August Wilson's Two Trains Running. He put the finishing flourishes on his newfound popularity with his powerful leading-man turn as an undercover narcotics agent in 1992's Deep Cover, with his role as a street-smart chess champ in 1993's Searching for Bobby Fischer, and with his explosive, Oscar-nominated characterization of drug-addicted, spouse-abusing '60s pop icon Ike Turner in 1993's What's Love Got To Do With It. In 1995, Fishburne went down in the record books again when he became the first African-American to play the title role of Othello on-screen. That same year, he made his off-Broadway debut as both playwright and director of Riff Raff, the story of an African-American con man's relationship with a white junkie. He made an unfortunate misstep with the execrable Fled in 1996, but nimbly regained his footing the following year with his performance as captain of a rescue-salvage vessel in the very gory and very scary Event Horizon, and with his portrayal of legendary Harlem underworld godfather Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson in Hoodlum. 1999 brought a co-starring role alongside Keanu Reeves in the well-received Warner Bros. sci-fi film The Matrix.

n effect created four individual imprints, one for each member of the group. The series of solo records that followed began with Sisqo's inaugural effort, Unleash The Dragon in 1999.