Keith David Biography
Born: June 04, 1956
Actor, singer, and voice actor Keith David has spent much of his career on the stage, but also frequently works in feature films and on television. A native of New York City, David first performed as a child, singing in the All Borough Chorus and later attended the prestigious High School of Performing Arts. Shortly after graduating from Juilliard, where he studied voice and theater, David landed a role in a production of +Coriolanus at Joseph Papp's Public Theater. He starred opposite Christopher_Walken. David made his Broadway debut in Albee's +The Lady From Dubuque (1980) and, two years later, had his first film role in John_Carpenter's The Thing. He would not appear in another feature film until he played King in Oliver_Stone's Platoon (1986). In between, David alternated between stage and television work. He appeared in five films in 1988, including Clint_Eastwood's Bird, where he gave a memorable performance as jazz sax player Buster Franklin. In 1992, David showed his considerable skill as a singer and dancer and won a Tony nomination for starring in the musical Jelly's_Last_Jam, opposite Gregory_Hines. David's film career really picked up in the mid-'90s, with roles ranging from a gunslinger in Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead to a New York cop in Spike_Lee's Clockers to an amputee who owns a pool parlor in Dead_Presidents (all 1995). In 1998, David had a brief but memorable role as Cameron_Diaz's boisterous stepfather in the Farrelly brother's zany Something_About_Mary. In one of the film's funniest scenes, David tries to help Diaz's prom date, Ben_Stiller, extricate himself from an embarrassingly sticky situation. He is also well known to animation fans for his voice work in, among other projects, Disney's Gargoyles, HBO's Spawn, and the English-dubbed version of the Japanese-animated film Princess Mononoke. Sandra Brennan, Rovi
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