The two legends who became Anthony Mackie’s mentors: “Always willing to listen”
It takes a brave man to go head-to-head in a rap battle with Eminem, someone who many see as the greatest of all time, let alone in a biopic of the Detroit hip-hop star’s life, but that’s exactly what Anthony Mackie did when he made his film debut in 2002’s award-winning 8 Mile.
Future Marvel star Mackie even went a step further by writing his own lyrics for his part as ‘Papa Doc’ in the movie, a gang leader who takes on Marshall Mathers in one of the movie’s most famous scenes, although he does end up losing – not that there’s any shame in that.
Juilliard-educated Mackie has had a long and varied career since growing up in New Orleans; he graduated from theatre to the big screen with Eminem’s film and followed it up with a role in the Academy Award-nominated Clint Eastwood boxing movie Million Dollar Baby. He returned to the world of New York Broadway theatre for a couple of years after that before he went back to hip hop – this time playing Tupac Shakur in Notorious, the film about the life of larger-than-life rapper The Notorious B.I.G.
That same year, Mackie starred alongside Jeremy Renner in Kathryn Bigelow’s ultra-tense Iraq war thriller The Hurt Locker. It was a huge success and was nominated for nine Oscars, winning six including awards for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay. Mackie himself won and was nominated for several industry awards for his performance.
He then had a role in 2011’s head-spinning sci-fi thriller The Adjustment Bureau with Matt Damon before he landed a genuinely life-changing part as ‘Falcon’ in Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier in 2014. It led to him reprising the role in several more movies including Avengers Infinity War, Age of Ultron and Endgame plus Ant Man with Paul Rudd.
It resulted in a Disney+ mini-series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, in 2021, and then this year, he was given his own movie: Captain America: Brave New World, which brought in the likes of Hollywood royalty Harrison Ford. While reviews from critics and the rabid Marvel fanbase have been mixed, Mackie’s performance has been praised, and he’ll be back in the final two Avengers movies in 2026 and 2027.
Mackie spoke to Southern US magazine Garden & Gun about his acting influences and the words of advice he’s had along the way, from two legends in particular. Firstly, Shawshank Redemption star Morgan Freeman, who told Mackie to “Let Hollywood come to you.” Mackie explained: “Morgan and I did a movie together [Million Dollar Baby] early on. He was huge for my career. To this day, he is just such a warm, inviting spirit. He’s always been willing to listen. It was interesting when he gave me that advice because that was how he made his career.
“He didn’t go for the first big thing he was offered. He worked in theater, he worked on his craft. So when he got that movie audition, he knocked it out of the park.”
Together with Freeman, the second actor to mentor Mackie was Pulp Fiction’s Samuel L Jackson, and Mackie said of the pair: “I think the fact that we’re all Southern meant we had kindred spirits. And black dudes from the South are just different types of dudes. We just talk and hang out, and have a few beers. They’ve always been open and reflective with me about their careers and mine.”
Mackie is now back for a second season of the Peacock Original video game adaptation Twisted Metal, in which he plays the main protagonist ‘John Doe’ in the fairly unhinged post-apocalyptic demolition derby.
