Terrence Howard Detonates In Craig Brewer’s “Hustle & Flow”
Cole Smithey Finds Out What Makes The Hottest Actor Around Tick
By Cole Smithey
Writer/director Craig Brewer’s Memphis-centric debut “Hustle & Flow” won the Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, and the term “buzz” doesn’t begin to describe the tidal wave of sustained praise the movie has garnered from critics and audiences alike. “Hustle & Flow” is a perfect example of an American independent film that boldly embraces its rarefied subject and squeezes out sparks from every scene and every line of subtext-rich dialogue.
Terrence Howard’s emotionally devastating performance as Djay, a low down pimp making a last ditch effort to turn his life around with music, is steeped in American values of redemption and ambition. Since creating unforgettable sensations on television (“NYPD Blue,” “Sparks”) and in movies (“Mr. Holland’s Opus,” “Dead Presidents”) Terrence Howard has been called the next Denzel Washington. But that lofty compliment doesn’t begin to evince the actor’s slow burning intensity, inscrutable poise and thoroughly individual nature. Terrence Howard is an actor you absolutely cannot take your eyes off. He’s unpredictable and unknowable in ways that beckon to the early career days of Marlon Brando. It’s a name that you’ll be hearing a lot more of in the coming years.
Q: Where are you from originally?
TH: Born in Chicago, raised in Cleveland.
Q: How does it feel to be called the “next big thing” due to your performance in “Hustle And Flow”?
TH: I feel great. Man, I feel great. Everybody smiling and looking at me like y’all know something I don’t. Like you got a car waiting for you when you get home.
Q: How much of your life did you have to let go of in order to become your character in “Hustle & Flow”?
TH: All of it. I had to let go of all of my sensibilities. I had to let my conscience go to bed for about a year. It wasn’t a question of me just being a character for a couple of months. I mean it would take a good year of demoralizing myself because that’s how I work. I mean, I wish I could just snap on and, you know, be somebody. But I had to go through all the motions. I had to start smoking cigarettes again. I watched a bunch of pornography again just to desensitize myself to my own conscience and my own sensibilities. It bothered me and I was telling them I was so afraid to do that. I was so afraid.
Q: Did it affect your personal life?
TH: You watch two or three hours of pornography every day. What do you think? I had to isolate and alienate myself from my children to accomplish that. So what Stephanie [the film’s producer] had asked me is, ‘Can you, for two years, put your wife away, put your children away, put your God away and lend yourself to us for these two years?’ I said no. I said no.
Then I read the script. I saw the hope associated with it. So I considered what I was going to have to do to myself was more so as a proctor, so to speak, in giving people an opportunity to see a lifestyle that might give them encouragement and hope. That if DJay could climb out from what he did, then anybody else can climb out. What people may not realize was that DJay’s happiest time in his life was when he was in jail. Because he knew he was finally paying for his sins. On his way out he’s like, ‘Oh God thank you.’ You know, ‘I’ve paid for it all and now I can move forward in my life.’ That was the message to me. You can accomplish your dreams. You still gotta pay for what you’ve done wrong but your dreams are still within reach.
Q: What did shooting in Memphis do for you?
TH: It gave me the opportunity to live and tell a complete story, you know. Other than that, if we had shot in LA it would have been the same. But you could feel the street and you could feel the heat. You were sweating and they’d have to come and spray you down. You were sweating. You were tired and exhausted and popping mosquitoes off of you all day. We shot that movie in 24 days.
Q: What are your thoughts on rappers like Ludacris becoming actors?
TH: Rappers are artists. Chris Bridges is an artist. You know he created the character Ludacris to sing rap but he’s an artist and an artist can play in any medium that he wants as long as he learns the medium. And it takes some training and time to learn how to adjust and apply yourself to that new medium. I was a scientist [Howard has a degree in Chemical Engineering from Pratt Institute], a singer/songwriter. I wasn’t trained as an actor. How in the hell did they let me come and act?
Q: Did you ever have a time in your life when you were as hopeless as DJay is in “Hustle & Flow”?
TH: We all have had that. That’s what makes it such an appealing story. You wake up and say, ‘I didn’t look like this years ago and I didn’t think like this. What kept me going then? What the hell am I doing in this God forsaken life?’
Q: What was the bleakest point in your life?
TH : Well, my Dad moved us into a house when I was 16 years-old to live and support ourselves because my stepmom wanted to shoot us. And so, being 16 years-old, living in a one thousand-dollar house. In the wintertime we didn’t have any electricity because we couldn’t pay for it and we had waterbeds. So my waterbed would freeze and we had a kerosene heater. I remember all the other kids would go to school and be able to do their homework and all that. I couldn’t do that. I had to go and figure out whose snow I would shovel or something so I could just get a dollar and twenty-five cents to get a gallon of kerosene so I could burn my kerosene heater. But guess what? When you’ve got the kerosene burning in the house, you’ve got to have a window open or you will suffocate. So I had the kerosene on in the middle of the winter, sleeping on a frozen waterbed with my brother and five different blankets, trying to be warm and trying to wash up because all the pipes are frozen in the house. You’re trying to wash up; you put a pot on top of the kerosene container so you would have hot water to wash up. So that was my life from sixteen to eighteen years old in Cleveland.
Q: What gave you hope back then that you could get out of that?
TH: I knew that there were people living out in Cambodia that didn’t have a house. At least I didn’t have to go through that. I just had to go to school and I was good looking and got a whole lot of attention. I just knew one day I would be an actor.
Q: Were you first drawn to acting in high school?
TH: No, I didn’t do nothing in high school. I crashed an audition in New York. I went and I said I’m going to be an actor and I moved to New York. At nineteen I moved to New York. I moved to New York and I was pretty good at talking you know. I conned my way into college. I had a 1.6 grade point average and I went to the admissions office at Pratt Institute and I told them that my transcripts were coming from L.A. right now and can we get the process going, how can I get extra funding? So they sent me to the HEOP office and when the office asked me where’s my transcripts, I said the admissions office had them but, ‘Can we get it going? What else do I need to do?’ They told me I could go down and get on welfare and I can get a supplemental student loan. The only point I wanted to go to college for is that I knew if I was in college I couldn’t go to an audition if I was living on campus and not lose my job and not lose my house. You know, if I got a job I could leave school for two weeks. I started crashing auditions, made a lying resume. Said I had twenty jobs, I was a member of SAG, EXTRA, AFTER, whatever. And I started crashing auditions.
Q: What was your first break there?
TH: I crashed an audition for “The Cosby Show.”
Q: And you got hired immediately?
TH: Six months later.
Q: How much did you make for that “Cosby” episode?
TH: Nineteen hundred dollars for one week.
Q: Was it that one episode that started your career?
TH: No, then I got into an argument with Bill Cosby. And so the casting director wasn’t kind with me anymore so I had to start the whole process over again.
Q: What did you get into an argument with Bill Cosby about?
TH: I thought he was responsible for them cutting down my part in the show and I didn’t realize it wasn’t him.
Q: You used a friend of your uncle’s for inspiration in your characterization of Djay.
TH: My uncle had a friend named Tweety Bird, that he loved a lot, that was a pimp. I loved Tweety Bird and I wanted to portray Tweety Bird and give him an opportunity, because Tweety Bird died ten years ago. But Tweety Bird would come by and give me twenty dollars when I was sixteen and didn’t have any money in the house. Tweety Bird would take me around and when it was too cold he would let me come stay at his house. You know, and I’m watching him with the women going around and watching this world. So DJay was an opportunity for me to give Tweety Bird a thank you. Because Tweety Bird was kind to me. I’d be sitting up crying and Tweety Bird would be like, you know, ‘Stop crying like a little bitch, you gotta be a man.’ So that became where that came from.
Q: Have you done any other movies since shooting “Crash” (currently playing)?
TH: I did “Crash,” then “Lackawanna Blues,” then “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” And then I did “Four Brothers” (directed by John Singleton), “My Life in Idlewilde,” “Get Rich Or Die Tryin'” (directed by Jim Sheridan).
Q: What are you looking for in your next role?
TH: For the next role, I believe you can take a starring role, but for the next three roles I need to be supporting because there’s so much work involved in preparing for a starring role. I need that amount of time now. The next starring role can’t be somebody as emotionally decapitated as my character was in “Hustle & Flow.” I need now to be on the other side so I can invite my family in. So I’ve got to seek that out.
Q: What do you think when people call you the next Denzel and maybe an Oscar nomination?
TH: I’m appreciative. I love what Denzel has done, but there’s only one D in my name and that’s in my middle name. My name’s Terrence and I kind of don’t want to fill Denzel’s shoes. I just want to do what Terrence is supposed to be doing.
Q What do you hope your performance as Djay accomplishes?
TH: That maybe I’ll give some hope to the rest of the world, that people may see this twenty years from now, the way I watched “Rocky,” and say ‘Oh my God I can get up and do it.’ The way I watched “Midnight Cowboy” and said, ‘Somebody that means nothing can become something.’
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