A tall, handsome rising young star often cast as street-tough black youths, Bokeem Woodbine offered a number of startling performances in a succession of feature films and TV longforms since the early 1990s. Encouraged by his mother to apply for work as an extra in Ernest Dickerson's 1991 directorial debut, "Juice". he was hired as a stand-in and caught the notice of casting director Jaki Brown-Karman who later suggested Woodbine to Forest Whitaker for the latter's directorial effort, "Strapped" (HBO, 1994). In that film, Woodbine portrayed an inner city youth selling drugs on the street and
