Jermaine Hopkins
- Actor
- Producer
At 14 years of age, Huggy fell into the acting business when his mother
brought him to a cattle-call audition in New York for the Warner
Brothers feature "Lean on Me", a starring role as a misguided
drug-abusing junior high school student. The line to get in to the
audition for the role of Thomas Sams was so long, it wrapped around
three city blocks. Huggy and his mother became so discouraged waiting
in the enormous line, they were just about to leave as the film's
writer, Michael Schiffer, walked by and spotted the two leaving. Huggy's unique
look caught the screenwriter's eye and he promptly brought Huggy to the
front of the line to meet the producers and the director. Needless to
say, he booked the job and the rest is history. Huggy had a string of
back-to-back successes in an acting career just beginning. His very
next project "Juice, " helmed by Ernest R. Dickerson, had him starring as Steel
along side Samuel L. Jackson, Queen Latifah, 'Dr. Dre', Omar Epps and the late Tupac Shakur.
Huggy subsequently starred in the HBO worldwide release "Strapped" that
would be Forest Whitaker's directorial debut. Huggy went on to carry his first
film, Phat Beach (1996) as the star from beginning to end. The next two years
were even more rewarding for Huggy, as he worked his way through
episodes of "Murder One, " "Moesha" and six episodes as Dupree on "The
Wayans Brothers" series before finishing production on his next film
"How to Be a Player" starring opposite Bill Bellamy and comedian
Pierre Edwards.