Wesley Snipes, (born July 31, 1962, Orlando, Florida, U.S.), American actor best known for his action films, many of which feature martial arts.

Snipes spent his early years in New York City’s South Bronx. He studied martial arts from age seven, initially because he was small for his age and needed to defend himself. At age 12, after winning a small role in an Off-Broadway production of The Me Nobody Knows, he decided that performing would be the focus of his future. He studied acting, music, and dance at the High School of the Performing Arts until 1977, when his mother moved the family back to Orlando, Florida. Shortly after receiving a B.A. degree from the State University of New York at Purchase, he made his motion-picture debut in Wildcats (1986) and appeared in a number of theatrical and television productions, including Miami Vice and the soap opera All My Children.

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In 1990 Snipes gained recognition when he played a musician in director Spike Lee’s film Mo’ Better Blues. The following year he received critical acclaim with his portrayal of Nino, a ruthless Harlem drug lord in the film New Jack City. In 1991 Snipes also won notice for his performance as a black architect who has an affair with his white secretary in Jungle Fever, also directed by Lee. In 1992, after starring roles in White Men Can’t Jump and The Waterdance, Snipes played an airline security expert who battles terrorists in Passenger 57, which was a hit at the box office.

As with screen legend Sean Connery (alias James Bond), his costar in Rising Sun (1993), and screen superstar Sylvester Stallone (alias Rambo), his costar in Demolition Man (1993), Snipes’s rapid ascent to the elite Hollywood echelon occurred mainly as a result of his film portrayals of action heroes who consistently outfight, outshoot, and outsmart the “bad guys.” In 1995, however, Snipes starred in a role far different from any others he had played: a cross-dresser named Noxeema Jackson in the comedy To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. His subsequent films included The Fan (1996), in which he appeared as a professional baseball player dealing with an obsessed fan (played by Robert De Niro); U.S. Marshals (1998), a thriller that also featured Tommy Lee Jones; and Down in the Delta (1998), the directorial debut of Maya Angelou.

In 1998 Snipes returned to action movies, portraying a vampire hunter in Blade. The film was a box-office hit and led to the sequels Blade II (2002) and Blade: Trinity (2004). Snipes later appeared in several straight-to-video features, including 7 Seconds (2005) and The Contractor (2007). He played a drug dealer in the crime thriller Brooklyn’s Finest (2009) and Doctor Death, an assassin in the action thriller The Expendables 3 (2014). In 2015 he portrayed a mysterious criminal overlord in the television thriller series The Player. Snipes appeared as a gang leader in Lee’s controversial Chi-Raq (2015), about gang violence in Chicago. His subsequent credits included Armed Response (2017) and Dolemite Is My Name (2019), a biopic starring Eddie Murphy as a blaxploitation star. He reteamed with Murphy in the comedy Coming 2 America (2021).

In addition to acting, Snipes cowrote (with Ray Norman) the novel Talon of God (2017), an action thriller about faith and science.