“Bad motherfuckers, man”: Laurence Fishburne names Britain’s greatest-ever actors
He might be best known for his roles in blockbusters like The Matrix and John Wick, but Laurence Fishburne is also a very accomplished dramatic performer. On film, he’s wowed in the likes of Mystic River, King of New York, and The Color Purple, and he also appeared in Apocalypse Now at the age of just 14. You know, as you do.
Fishburne is also an accomplished stage actor. He won a Tony Award in 1992 for his performance in the August Wilson play Two Trains Running and was nominated again in 2008 for a one-man play called Thurgood. In 1999, he trod the boards as King Henry II of England in a performance of James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter, which prompted him to reflect on the great thespians of Britain’s past.
In an interview with Empire magazine during the play’s run, he gave a list of the British actors he admired the most, with his own unique spin. “Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, lan Holm,” he named. “All of these cats, they’re just … bad motherfuckers, man.”
O’Toole is a particularly interesting name, as he played the same role as Fishburne in the 1968 movie adaptation of The Lion in Winter. In terms of collaborating with idols, he only managed it once, appearing in the 1995 crime thriller Just Cause alongside Sean Connery. Although, considering that the film has been largely discredited, perhaps there’s a reason Fishburne neglected to mention this in the interview.
As he was speaking in 1999, the topic of The Matrix naturally came up. “We all knew we were making something really extraordinary,” he said of the Wachowski’s reality-bending classic. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that anyone’s going to get it. The wonderful thing about the film is that it does several things at one time. It introduces you to this really amazing concept about alternate realities. It deals with a great many spiritual teachings which have run through human consciousness for centuries. And then it gives you this great sort of ride, this great visual feast, that you can get lost in if you want to.”
When asked about the possibility of more films in the franchise, Fishburne replied, “There’s supposed to be a prequel and a sequel. I would love to be on board, but I’m not assuming anything. I can just tell you I would love nothing more.” No prequel ever materialised, but there were three follow-ups to The Matrix made. The first two, Reloaded and Revolutions, both came out in 2003 and both featured Fishburne returning to the role of Morpheus, the mentor figure to Keanu Reeves’ Neo. As for the fourth film, 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II debuted as a modified version of the character.
He might not have been in Resurrections, but Fishburne hasn’t taken his foot off the gas at all in recent years. He’s appeared in four different movies in 2024; a sci-fi adventure called Slingshot; a more grounded thriller called Cellar Door; the massive animated flick Transformer One; and Francis Ford Coppola’s regrettable passion project Megalopolis. It’s a schedule that might have left a few of his favourite actors blushing, and is a signifier that Fishburne has always taking his work extremely seriously.
