Fame Is Easy, Acting Is Hard

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In addition to meetings, Benjamin kept doing the boring stuff--working on the craft, reading and rereading scripts, being on time and prepared--and gradually more offers came in. He debated whether to take the role of cartoonish gangsta rapper Dabu in Be Cool but figured the script was satirical enough that no one would take his performance literally. (Several reviewers hailed him as the best thing in a bad movie.) He also started work on My Life in Idlewild, an avant-garde period musical for HBO built around OutKast songs. (Shot in 2004, Idlewild is scheduled to air next year.) "We wanted Ving Rhames in the movie," says Benjamin, "and the only way he'd do it was if he could get on the phone with me first. He says, 'I need to know: Are you serious about this? Because I've worked with rappers who come in and get high and blubber through lines, and I'm not going to let you waste my time.' I told him, 'I don't do dope, I take acting seriously, and I want to be great.'" Rhames took the part. "He's the only [actor] to confront me like that," says Benjamin. "I appreciated it, in a way. It beats people whispering."

Clips of Benjamin's performance in Idlewild as a Prohibition-era musician-undertaker circulated widely, and soon Guy Ritchie hired him to play a supporting role as a British-accented loan shark in this September's heist movie Revolver. Then Singleton came offering one of the leads in Four Brothers. "He's amazing in the Idlewild stuff I've seen," says Singleton, "but I did my research too." As Jeremiah, the only Mercer brother with a wife, kids, a job and a shred of respectability, Benjamin, who had just a week to prepare for the role, gives the most nuanced performance in the film--which means he gets to demonstrate a handful of emotions, as opposed to star Mark Wahlberg's two. Four Brothers isn't bad, but it is a movie in which bullets do a lot of the emoting.

By his own admission, Benjamin is still a ways from being a bankable star or an Academy Award threat. In the meantime, he continues to hone his skills, less out of a desire to be taken seriously now than for personal enjoyment. He keeps observations and notes about people he meets in daily life for use in future performances (on his BlackBerry he has a detailed file on the man who changed his water filter), and he has at least arrived in the position where he has quality choices to make. "Someone just sent me the script for Dreamgirls, with Beyoncé," he says, "but I can't do it. The director wanted to meet, and I'd really love to work with this director [Bill Condon], but I just finished a musical, and it was a period piece. I don't want to get typecast." Especially after working so hard to avoid it.