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Wesley Snipes, Hollywood's hottest new star talks about: his divorce, his days on the streets and why he doesn't have 'jungle fever.' - Cover Story
Ebony, Sept, 1991 by Laura B. Randolph
Snipes was one of only four Black students in the theater arts department at State University at Purchase. "I felt like mold on white bread," he confides. Then he saw a documetary on Malcolm X, and the Muslim faith--with its emphasis on Black pride--became his consuming passion. "What saved me was being exposed to Malcolm," he says. "When I saw the documentary, it changed my whole life--everything. . . I went straight to the library and literally stole the [Autobiography of Malcolm X], and for two days I just read."
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As a young Black man coming of age surrounded by a sea of Whites, says Snipes, Islam was a lifeline for him. Today, however, he is no longer Muslim. "A brother of mine used to say, 'When you're drowning, grab onto a log to keep afloat. But don't hold on to the log when the boat comes by. Get on the boat and bring your butt on back home.' So Islam for me was the log to make me more conscious of what African people have accomplished, of my self-worth, to give me some self-dignity."
Deciding to leave his marriage was decidedly more anguishing. He and his then-wife had been together since his senior year in college. They'd married a year after he graduated and four years later, in 1989, they had a son. "When the doctor pulled Jelani out and held him up . . . that was definitely the greatest moment," he remembers. "There's never been anything like that."
Things between him and his wife, however, wen't so incredible. In fact, things weren't working out at all, and Snipes was intensely conflicted about what to do. "When you marry a person you think "til death do us part," he says, his voice and eyes filling with pai. Whenever he thought about separating, he thought about Jelani, about hisown father leaving when he was just one, about shattered dreams and broken promises.
The memory is still painful. "I think being in this industry had a lot to do with it," he says of his divorce. "It's so difficult for a person who isn't an artist to be involved with someone who is. The real story is how difficult it is to balance the love of your art--something that really is who you are, your essence--with someone that you've fallen in love with. And for that person to suggest that you give up your art, well that's suicide. It's like your blood, your skin. You can't divorce it. To not do it means you're dead. . . . And then you have all the other things: long separations, other women coming in trying to manipulate."
When he and his wife first separated, Wesley says, his pain was relentless. He would leave of the set where he was shooting King of New York, hop into his Acura Legend and drive for hours, sometimes all night, stopping only to refill the tank, or watch the sun come up. "When I left the house, I lived out of my car," he remembers. "I was a vagabond. I'd crash here, crash there, sleep in the car some nights. I'd take the car and fill it up with gas and just drive. The saving grace was that I was working. I dind't want to leave the set. I hated it when the day was over. I'd fill the car up two or three times and just keep driving. I had a car phone and I'd call people and just drive and talk, drive and talk. . . . The situation was so messed up, the worst. There wasn't nothing sweet about that at all."
