Age: 52
male
Mahershala Ali (/məˈhɜːrʃələ/ mə-HUR-shə-lə; born Mahershalalhashbaz Gilmore on February 16, 1974) is an American actor. He has received multiple accolades, including two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2019, and in 2020, The New York Times ranked him among the 25 greatest actors of the 21st century. After pursuing an MFA degree from New York University, Ali began his career as a regular on television series Crossing Jordan (2001–02) and Threat Matrix (2003–04), before his breakthrough role as Richard Tyler in the science fiction series The 4400 (2004–07). His first major film role was in the David Fincher-directed fantasy The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). He gained wider attention for supporting roles in the final two films of the original The Hunger Games film series and in House of Cards, for which he received his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination. Ali won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances as a drug dealer in the drama Moonlight (2016) and as Don Shirley in the comedy-drama Green Book (2018). He is the first Black actor to win two Academy Awards in the same category and the second Black actor to win multiple acting Oscars. Ali won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Program for executive producing We Are the Dream: The Kids of the Oakland MLK Oratorical Fest (2020). In 2019, he played a troubled police officer in the third season of the HBO anthology crime series True Detective, and in 2020, he starred in the second season of the Hulu comedy-drama series Ramy. He was nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards for both performances. Ali has also played Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes in the first season of the Netflix series Luke Cage (2016) and voiced Aaron Davis in the animated films Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023). Description above from the Wikipedia article Mahershala Ali, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Born in the star-studded luxury of The Apex Penthouse, baby Hercules is target number one for Hades, a ruthless music mogul and ruler of "The Down-Low." Hades wants to overthrow Zeus and take over the city, but a prophecy warns that Hercules will stop him. Hades sends his two bumbling corner hustlers, Pain and Panic, to inject the baby with a street serum designed to strip away his divine spirit. The job gets interrupted, leaving Hercules stranded in the working-class neighborhood of The Mortal Flats. He retains his god-like, earth-shattering physical strength, but loses his memory of where he came from. Cut to twenty years later. Hercules is a beautiful but deeply awkward misfit who doesn't know his own strength, constantly breaking things and accidentally tearing up the neighborhood. After a spiritual encounter with a monument of his birth father, Zeus, Hercules learns he is a displaced god. To return to The Apex, he must prove himself a "True Hero" on the streets below. Zeus sends him to Philoctetes ("Phil"), a legendary, washed-up, gruff boxing trainer living in a gym filled with old trophies. Alongside his childhood best friend and hype-man, Pegasus, Hercules trains to become a heavyweight champion and local savior, fighting off Hades' supernatural street gangs and literal monsters (reimagined as runaway industrial transit trains and corrupt corporate mechs). Along the way, he falls hard for Megara ("Meg"), a fiercely independent, cynical street-stylist who is secretly indentured to Hades. To save the city and the woman he loves, Hercules must realize that true heroism isn't measured by the size of your muscles or your fame, but by the strength of your heart.
