Laurence John Fishburne III (born July 30, 1961) is an American actor, producer, and director whose career spans more than five decades across film, television, and theatre. He began acting as a child, marking his early screen debut in Apocalypse Now, and rose to prominence in the 1990s with acclaimed performances in Boyz n the Hood, Deep Cover, Searching for Bobby Fischer, and his Academy Award-nominated turn as Ike Turner in What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993). A Tony Award winner for Two Trains Running and a multi-Emmy winner (including for TriBeCa, Miss Evers’ Boys, and the short-form drama #FreeRayshawn), Fishburne also garnered numerous Emmy and Golden Globe nominations throughout his career. He achieved global recognition as Morpheus in The Matrix trilogy and is known for diverse roles in films such as Mystic River, Contagion, Mission: Impossible III, Event Horizon, Akeelah and the Bee, and as the Bowery King in the John Wick series.

On television, Laurence is notable for playing Dr. Ray Langston on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Jack Crawford in Hannibal, and executive producing and starring in black-ish. In recent years, Fishburne has continued to expand his range with genre work — portraying the vampire Regis in seasons 4 and 5 of Netflix’s The Witcher and starring in features like Slingshot (2024), The Amateur (2025), the sci-fi thriller The Astronaut (2025), and voice roles in animated fare such as Transformers One — while also producing (Sneaks, 2025) and exploring directing with projects like The Rule of Nines. In 2026 he joined the ensemble cast of Mike Flanagan’s new The Exorcist film, slated for a 2027 release, cementing his status as a dynamic and enduring presence in contemporary film and television.