Keith Stanfield
Keith Stanfield
LaKeith Lee "Keith" Stanfieldis an American actor and rapper. He made his feature film debut in Short Term 12, for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. In 2014, he co-starred in the horror film The Purge: Anarchy and in the Martin Luther King biopic Selma, as civil right activist Jimmie Lee Jackson. In 2015, Stanfield appeared in the film Dope, and the biopic about the hip-hop group N.W.A, Straight Outta Compton, portraying Snoop Dogg in the latter...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth12 August 1991
CitySan Bernardino, CA
CountryUnited States of America
It's been constant grinding and trying to secure work that I care about, tireless auditions and meetings. I've been fortunate that a lot of cool doors have opened to me, chiefly meeting great people who were inspired by what I've done and what they feel I could bring to their projects.
That was like my safe place with great teachers where everyone could let down their guard and not feel judged. As soon as we walk outside, it was like, 'Look at these weird drama club kids.' But we all had our own agreement that we were cool in our own way.
The prison industrial system, things like that are cleverly put in place to attempt to marginalize a certain group of people - and it's not only black, it's replete across the American society.
I've been fortunate to get involved with 'Short Term 12.' I was just a young teenager on the Internet, clicking on anything that had the word 'actor' in it. One day, someone called me in for a movie audition.
Victorville gave me opportunity to go inside and explore my imagination a bit.
My biggest strength is I'm courageous, or if I am afraid of something, I do it anyway. I do what I feel. It's nothing personal against anyone, so that courageousness has been very good to me.
You can be the most intelligent person, and you can have so much potential, but if you don't have a guide by which to channel that energy, then a lot of times, it's futile.
I grew up very poor in a fractured family that was dysfunctional on both sides, but I sort of put up these reflectors to most of the negative things that have occurred in my life. I don't carry around much baggage.
I wanted to be as genuine as possible because all those people like Jimmie Lee Jackson - me, Mike Brown, all these people - we're all the same; we're not much different.
It's a hard thing when you've got guns pointed at you, to still stand up for what you believe in. Jimmie Lee and his family did that, and several others.
When I was little, when I was a toddler or something, I would watch 'Jason's Lyrica' lot.
When you're talking about an authority figure oppressing against people, it's the people that hold that authority figure up. If you want to get free of this bondage, then we need to think about ways to free ourselves rather than looking to the oppressors to free us.
They say every five years the atoms in your body become a new set of atoms.
My two little twin brothers have autism, so I grew up around it and misunderstood it for a long time.