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Reel Action Hero

If cool were a liquid, Ving Rhames would have it in buckets.

From his shaved head to his silky shirt to his muscular curves, he is all smooth surface -- all 6 feet 2 inches and 209 pounds of him. He conducts himself with deep seriousness, almost ponderous self-regard and laser-beam concentration. There's a disciplined power in him. And when the 35-year-old actor enters a room, he jolts the atmosphere.

The camera feels it, too. In his best-known movie roles -- Marsellus Wallace in "Pulp Fiction" and Luther in "Mission: Impossible" -- he dominates every scene he's in.

"God has blessed me with a certain amount of presence and a certain amount of charisma," he says, when pushed to analyze himself.

But for Rhames, it's time for change, time for better. In "Rosewood," which opens today, Rhames can be seen in a different light: as a romantic leading man. Finally he gets to dominate the whole movie and win the girl while he's doing so. "I've never had a director or role that allowed me to go to those places."

With "Rosewood," he gets both: The director is John Singleton, who made "Boyz N the Hood." And the role is Mann, a World War I veteran and drifter who passes through a relatively affluent all-black township on the eve of its destruction. Soon after a white woman from a neighboring town falsely claims she has been assaulted by a black man, a lynch mob surges toward the unsuspecting town.

Mann, whose poise, self-assurance and money are intimidating to these impoverished vigilantes, is clearly at risk.

The film is based on a true story. Rosewood -- an autonomous township of about 120 African Americans in Florida -- was burned to the ground on New Year's Day 1923. Officially, the fatalities were six blacks and two whites. But survivors of the violence (who recently received $150,000 each in compensation from the state of Florida) and their relatives claim more.

Rosewood, Rhames says, is about "the atrocity of Americans upon Americans. It has been broadened to be a story about the forces of good versus the forces of evil. This could have been the British versus the Americans. This could have been white on white. The tragedy is not so much racially specific as it is spiritual."

The movie has received mixed reviews. But whatever one's opinions about the film, Rhames (who plays a fictionalized character) is undeniably stirring.

What attracted him to the role, Rhames says, were "the complexities of the character, the intricacies of the character, the fact that he's almost a new type of black man as far as the cinema is concerned. He's a loner, a soldier, a veteran, he's independent, courageous, heroic, a survivor. He's everything that African American men and women have gone through in the history of the world."

As Marsellus Wallace in "Pulp Fiction," Rhames gives us one of the great cult performances. He's the crime lord who chucks someone from a tall building for massaging the feet of his wife. He's also the one who suffers an excruciating rape, then -- with sword in hand -- utters these unique words of vengeance: "I'm gonna get medieval on your [expletive for backside]."

"The fact that Marsellus gets raped created empathy, because the toughest, most powerful man was put in the most vulnerable position," Rhames says. "With each take of that scene in which I yelled, `I'm going to get medieval on your [bleep],' I cried. But [director] Quentin Tarantino used the one take where I wasn't crying."

There's something more significant about Rhames's cultish popularity than mere stardom. Rhames, who was born and raised in Harlem, who studied classical acting at the Juilliard School of Drama, is living proof that adversity breeds other things besides failure.

But there's even more than that. Rhames smashes cultural perceptions.

As Wallace, he speaks as much to white suburban teenagers as he does to inner-city African Americans. And in "Mission: Impossible," everyone plugs for Luther, the crack computer expert who helps Tom Cruise infiltrate CIA headquarters in Langley. The role, it almost goes without saying, was originally slated for a nerdy, white computer-geek type.

White kids, Rhames reports, approach him with hushed reverence. "Marsellus Wallace," they say. "You're cool, man." Black fans come at him with "Marsellus Wallace, you're a bad mutha."

To Rhames, these encounters aren't annoying, they're welcome, even heaven-sent. "When I do talk to them about something important, they'll listen because they've already put me on a pedestal. I think that's divine intervention. God is putting me in a position to affect people."

Rhames, one of whose favorite phrases is "To thine own self be true," makes a point of confounding perceptions. His attitude on this subject isn't strident so much as clear and absolute. He describes himself as a Christian, but emphasizes his faith is free of the right-wing and televangelist connotations that that might entail. And professionally, he refuses to be defined by the limited vision of West Coast moguls.

"I don't give Hollywood the power to limit me," he says. If he stops getting the roles he wants, or if he feels typecast into a corner, he says, "I can always do theater, I can do Ibsen, I can do Macbeth, I can do Chekhov, I can do Moliere, Othello, I can do Richard III."

It's even necessary, he says, to avoid any limitations set by African Americans as to what he, as an artist, can or cannot do. His mother, Reather Rhames, had a piece of wisdom on this subject, which he holds inside him like a small candle: "She said, `People spoke bad of Jesus Christ, so you know they're going to talk bad about you.' "

While many of his childhood friends succumbed to drugs, Rhames passed. Ignoring the easy money on the street, he played football for Covent Avenue Baptist Church.

"I've never smoked a joint in my life," he says, in a tone that's more matter-of-fact than sanctimonious. "Never did drugs or smoked reefer. It would really have hurt my mother, who sacrificed her life for me. And I don't feel I missed anything."

His home life was solid. His father, Ernest, was an auto mechanic, and his mother, a religious woman, stayed at home to raise the two boys, Irving and Junior. (Yes, Mr. Cool's God-given name is Irving, which he shortened.)

Again, perception was everything. For the young Rhames, Harlem wasn't a hopeless drug haven, it was a place of variety, cultural richness and spirituality. James Brown, or Sam & Dave, could be heard at the Apollo Theatre. There was a Black Panthers office in his neighborhood, a Nation of Islam temple and several churches.

"It was all osmosis," he recalls. "It was seeping into me somehow."

When he was about 14, Rhames wrote out the letters of "Harlem" and added words to go with them. He recites. Next to H, he wrote "Hopes and dreams of fame and glory." After A, he put "A do or die, make or break situation."

He can't remember what he wrote for R. So he moves to L. "Learning to lose," he says. He quickly corrects himself: "Looking for gold in the gutter." The final two letters come easily. "E: Every man born equal, so we've been told. M: Miseries, yet still my own personal battleground."

He's not happy about the R omission. He takes a minute to think, face cradled in his hands. "Put `running,' " he says, eventually. "Just `running.' "

When a teacher praised the way he read poetry in junior high, something clicked inside him. On a whim, he applied to the High School of the Performing Arts in New York, the one made familiar by the TV series "Fame." To his delight, he was accepted. He went on to Juilliard, graduating in 1983. He started acting in Shakespeare in the Park the following Monday, and he has been working steadily since.

There were stage roles in "Ajax," "Richard II," "The Boys of Winter" and "Ascension Day." There were countless small roles in film and TV. Chances are, you've seen him a few times. He's appeared in "Kiss of Death," "Patty Hearst," "Casualties of War" and "Jacob's Ladder." He was a street hustler in "The Saint of Fort Washington," a Secret Service agent in "Dave" and a bouncer in "Striptease." On television, he had a recurring role in "ER" as Er\iq La Salle's brother-in-law. He also appeared on PBS in "American Playhouse's" "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and a TNT miniseries called "The Iran Project."

Then came his "Pulp Fiction" part, which prompted director Brian De Palma to recruit him for "Mission: Impossible." Success begat success -- or at least other movies. (The less said about "Striptease" and the recently released "Dangerous Ground," in which he plays a West African drug dealer, the better.) He's still on a roll. He'll be seen next in "Con Air" opposite Nicolas Cage, and in "Body Count" with David Caruso and Forest Whitaker. And he plans to play Jack Johnson, the great black boxer, in an as-yet-untitled project.

More importantly for Rhames, his life remains his own; he shares it now with his wife of three years, Valerie Scott, a former movie publicist. They live in Santa Monica, Calif. They have a dog named Van Gogh. Rhames turns 36 in May. "Now I'm Ving Rhames the husband. It only enhances me, fleshes me. And God willing, when I have children, I'll be Ving Rhames, actor, artist, husband and now father."

To educate his kids, he's going to teach them "everything" from his personal experience. "Using the Africanist model," he says, "each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father's folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn't do this and offer me this background, I wouldn't be here. And then there's myself. And I guess I've come quite a ways."

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company

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