The Untold Truth Of Wesley Snipes

Wesley Snipes is that rare Hollywood actor who can do everything from serious (Jungle Fever), to comedic (Major League) to badass action hero (Blade). But he's also got an off-camera reputation as, uhh, let's just say a "quirky" dude, and sometimes that reputation overshadows his real on-screen accomplishments.

When you hear the name "Wesley Snipes," you probably don't just think larger-than-life superhero vampire killer, you think "tax evader" and probably also "prima donna." When a person decides to become an actor, that's not really the reputation he tends to envision for himself, and yet, the stories about Snipes and his antics just keep coming.

If we're being honest, Snipes has kind of made his own bed as far as his reputation is concerned. No one doubts his talent, but some people doubt his sanity. So let's have a look at some of Wesley Snipes' untold truths, and then we'll let you be the judge.

Wesley Snipes was born in Orlando, Florida, but he grew up in the Bronx, where he discovered his love of acting. According to GQ, Snipes was accepted to the School of Performing Arts in New York at the age of 13, but was only there for a couple of years before his mother announced that they were moving back to Florida. So that was sucky, but then things got even suckier when Snipes got a phone call from a well-known New York theater producer, inviting him to take part in an upcoming musical — on his last day in New York, as his stuff was literally being loaded into the U-Haul. And then things got super-extra sucky when he got back to Florida and learned that the movie Fame was being shot at the School of Performing Arts, and a lot of his former classmates were in it.

A lot of kids would have given up in despair at that point, but not Snipes. After he was voted "Most Talented" by his high school graduating class in 1980, he went on to the State University of New York, where he obtained a Fine Arts degree. It wasn't until 1986, though, that he finally got his big break — a casting agent helped him get a role in the football movie Wildcats, which you've probably never heard of. It's okay, though, no one else has heard of it either.

Wesley Snipes' reputation as a tough guy (excluding the Mike Tyson knockout punch in a public restroom) has probably contributed to a persistent rumor about his relationship with actress Halle Berry. In a 1996 interview with People Magazine, Berry said a boyfriend once hit her hard enough to puncture her left eardrum, resulting in an 80% hearing loss in that ear. She didn't name any names, but we do know she was involved with Snipes at one time. In fact, according to people who knew her at the time, their breakup caused her a lot of personal distress.

There's no real proof it was Snipes who hit Berry, though, and she's never come right out and said it was, either. But her former boyfriend, the R&B singer Christopher Williams, pointed the finger at Wesley Snipes (after vehemently denying that he himself was responsible), and two of her other exes were similarly accusatory. Former MLB star David Justice even went so far as to publicly deny that he was the abuser in a Tweet that mostly just proved he doesn't understand capitalization: "Reading the latest Halle Berry Reports, it wasn't me who hit Halle causing the ear damage. Halle has never said that I hit her." And then in follow-up tweets Justice added the initials "WS," because maybe he was afraid spelling the whole name out would cause the revenge-seeking ghost of Wesley Snipes to appear in a mirror or something.

So yeah, we don't want to say that Wesley Snipes has an ego or anything, but he kind of has an ego. And if you need more evidence, there was that time he led police on a 120 mph chase down Florida's Turnpike in 1994. Here's how it unfolded: According to the Palm Beach Post, a dispatcher informed the Martin County Sheriff's Office that there was a motorcyclist "going 120, 130" on the turnpike. Officers responded, and the motorcyclist led them on a 30-mile, three-county chase that ended when he crashed into a grassy area on a turnpike exit. An officer ordered the fallen cyclist to stay on the ground, and the cyclist replied, "Don't you want to know who I am?"

"I don't care who you are," the trooper said. "Get on the ground."

It was Wesley Snipes, of course, and officers also say that during the chase he tossed something "about the size of a baseball" off the side of the road. Police later found three ounces of marijuana wrapped in tape, though they couldn't conclusively prove it belonged to Snipes. Snipes was briefly handcuffed and charged with reckless driving. His defense: He didn't know he was being chased and the crash at the exit was just the normal, ordinary sort of crashing one might expect to happen when exiting the turnpike at 130 mph.

Snipes got a $7,150 bill for court costs and was sentenced to 80 hours of community service.

White Men Can't Jump was the unlikely buddy film where Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes scammed their way through pickup basketball games. Snipes and Harrelson have actually starred in three films together (unless you count Play it to the Bone, the Woody Harrelson film that includes a Wesley Snipes cameo and would bring the total number to four). Harrelson and Snipes first teamed up in Wildcats, that one movie no one can recall, before going on to star together in White Men Can't Jump and Money Train. Over the years the two have formed an obvious bond — some might even say bromance — to the point where Harrelson once went out of his way to stick up for his friend.

According to the Smoking Gun, Harrelson wrote a character reference letter to help Snipes during the sentencing phase of his tax evasion trial. In the letter, Harrelson called Snipes "a true citizen of the world" and assured the judge that he "strives for rightness in all his relations." Except for his taxes, but whatever. In an interview with BET, Harrelson also said that he would choose Wesley Snipes as his Hunger Games killing partner, you know, because of all the rightness in all his relations and citizen of the world stuff because that will give you an advantage against people with longbows and beehives and stuff. Bromance.

Wesley Snipes has a reputation for being, well, difficult. There's no better illustration of that than Patton Oswalt's first-hand account of what he was like on the set of Blade: Trinity. "Wesley was just f***ing crazy in a hilarious way," Oswalt told the AV Club. "He wouldn't come out of his trailer, and he would smoke weed all day." In fact he was often high on set or just not there at all, and Oswalt says everyone had to compensate for his, shall we say, absent performance. "A lot of the lines that Ryan Reynolds has were just a result of Wesley not being there," said Oswalt. "We would all just think of things for him to say and then cut to Wesley's face not doing anything because that's all we could get from him."

Snipes was also a bit of a hothead — Oswalt said he tried to strangle director David Goyer over another actor's attire, and the day after Goyer jokingly tried to hire a bunch of bikers to pretend to be his security, Snipes sat down with him and said, "I think you need to quit. You're detrimental to this movie." Unfazed, Goyer replied, "Why don't you quit? We've got all your close-ups, and we could shoot the rest with your stand-in."

Ever the tough guy, Snipes backed down and then for the rest of the production refused to communicate with Goyer except via sticky notes, which he would sign "From Blade."