Ice-T

Too hot and strong for some tastes, this rapper-rocker and actor has been steeped in controversy while thriving in his entertainment career. While condemned in some circles as a "gangsta" rapper promoting anti-social attitudes and actions, Ice-T has lectured at colleges around the country, appeared in public service specials, and created two L.A.-based youth intervention programs. He received his greatest notoriety with the song "Cop Killer", recorded with his "thrash metal" band Body Count. Police pressure groups were so offended that Sire Records, a Warners-owned recording label, removed the cut from subsequent pressings of the album.

Convincingly fierce yet strikingly handsome, the light-brown-complected rapper was a natural for movies. He appeared in ten films from 1984-1994, mostly in small roles and cameos set in the world of hip-hop (e.g., "Breakin'" 1984; "Rappin'" 1985; "CB4" 1993; "Who's the Man?" 1993). He proved charismatic and credibly hard-boiled in "New Jack City" (1991), his first film as a lead, playing a street-wise cop. His reputed past as a L.A. gang member lent authority to his portrayals of the sympathetic gang leader friend of Denzel Washington in "Ricochet" (1991) and the coolly authoritative gangster King James opposite a comparably formidable Ice Cube in Walter Hill's outstanding "Trespass" (1992). Ice-T also starred as a homeless man hunted for sport in Ernest Dickerson's action feature "Surviving the Game" (1994). The following year found Ice-T in colorful supporting roles in the sci-fi outings "Tank Girl" and "Johnny Mnemonic". The former, generally deemed a post-apocalyptic mess, had him playing an angry mutant (apparently half-man/half-kangaroo) while the latter presented him as the leader of a gang of technological scavengers. Segueing to acting on the small screen, Ice-T offered a memorable portrayal of crazed drug lord Danny-Up on several episodes of Fox's hip(hop) crime drama "New York Undercover" (1995-96). In the fall of 1997, he had one of the leads in the Dick Wolf-produced NBC drama "Players."

Ice-T got an ironic break when the former "Cop Killer" singer was cast as a policeman on the successful series "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" in 2000. He continued to appear in films as well, appearing in the Abel Ferrara drama "R Xmas" as well the comedy "3000 Miles to Graceland." in 2001. In 2002, he costarred in the independent film "Tracks" and also had several telvision projects in the works while continuing his weekly role on "SVU."