Wesley Snipes Biography
Wesley Snipes is a well-known name in the American entertainment industry, having held the roles of film producer, actor, and martial artist. His most well-known film roles include those in Major League (1989), Mo’ Better Blues (1990), New Jack City (1991), White Guys Can’t Jump (1992), and Demolition Man (1993), as well as the Marvel Comics character Blade in the Blade film trilogy (1998–2004).
In 1991, he established Amen-Ra Films as a production firm and Black Dot Media as a subsidiary in order to create concepts for the cinema and television industries. Snipes began his training in martial arts at the age of 12, and he has since earned the rank of 5th Dan Black Belt in Shotokan Karate and 2nd Dan Black Belt in Hapkido.
In 2010, Wesley “Wesley Snipes” Snipes began serving a three-year jail sentence in McKean County, Pennsylvania, for the misdemeanor offense of failing to file U.S. federal income tax filings. In 2013, he was granted his freedom from behind bars.
Wesley Snipes Age
Snipes (Wesley Trent Snipes) was born on July 31, 1962, in Orlando, Florida. He is 61 years old.
Wesley Snipes Height
Wesley stands at a height of 5′ 9″ (1.75 m).
Wesley Snipes Family
On July 31, 1962, Wesley “Wesley” Snipes was born in Orlando, Florida. He was born to Marian Snipes, whose maiden name was Long and who worked as an assistant teacher, and Wesley Rudolph Snipes, who was an aircraft engineer. He spent his childhood in the Bronx, which is located in New York City.
Wesley Snipes Education
Snipes attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts after enrolling in the High School of Performing Arts there. After some time, he moved back to Florida, but he never finished his education there.
After completing his high school education at Jones High School in Orlando, he moved back to his home state of New York to enroll at the State University of New York at Purchase. In addition, Snipes received his education at Southwest College, which is located in Los Angeles, California.
Wesley Snipes Wife | Wesley Snipes Children
Snipes has been married for a total of two times. He was previously married to April Snipes, with whom he had a son named Jelani. Jelani appeared in a cameo capacity in Snipes’s film Mo’ Better Blues, which was released in 1990. Later on, Snipes tied the knot with the painter Nakyung “Nikki” Park, and the couple now has four children together.
Snipes is also the father of a son, who was born in 2008 and resides in Vancouver, in the country of Canada. Snipes had a Christian upbringing but in 1978 he made the decision to convert to Islam. In 1988, he turned his back on Islam. During an interview in 1991, Wesley Snipes stated, “Islam made me more conscious of what African people had accomplished. It also made me more aware of my own self-worth, and it provided me with some measure of dignity.”
Wesley Snipes Son
Snipes together with his first wife have a son named Jelani, who had a cameo role in Snipes’s 1990 film Mo’ Better Blues.
Wesley Snipes New Movie
Wesley Snipes Martial Arts
When Snipes was 12 years old, he began his training in various forms of martial arts and frequently sparred with Aaron Willyard, a childhood friend of his. He holds a black belt in Shotokan Karate at the 5th degree as well as a black belt in Hapkido at the 2nd degree.
In addition, he has received instruction from Mestre Jelon Vieira in the art of capoeira. He has also trained in a variety of other disciplines, such as kung fu at the USA Shaolin Temple, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and kickboxing. When Wesley Snipes was living in New York, his close friend and business partner Brooke Ellis instructed him in the art of fighting.
Wesley Snipes Jail Time
On October 12, 2006, Snipes, Eddie Ray Kahn, and Douglas P. Rosile were each charged with one count of conspiring to defraud the United States of America and one count of knowingly making or aiding and abetting the making of a false and fraudulent claim for payment against the United States of America. The charges stemmed from an incident that occurred in which the defendants submitted a claim for payment to the government that was false and fraudulent. In addition to this, Snipes was charged with six counts of deliberately failing to file federal income tax returns by the deadlines for filing those forms.
Snipes was charged with conspiracy, and one of the allegations against him was that he had submitted a fake amended return. This contains a fraudulent tax refund claim for the year 1996 in the amount of more than $4 million, as well as a false amended return, which includes a false tax refund claim for the year 1997 in the amount of more than US$7.3 million.
The government had the impression that Snipes intended to acquire fraudulent tax refunds by utilizing a tax protester idea that was referred to as the “861 arguments.” The notion that U.S. citizens and residents should not be required to pay taxes on their income earned within the country. In addition, the government alleged that Snipes had defrauded the Internal Revenue Service by sending them three fake “bills of exchange” for a total of fourteen million dollars (IRS).
The government also brought additional charges against Snipes for the fact that he failed to file tax returns for the years 1999 through 2004. Snipes sent a letter of response to his indictment on December 4, 2006, in which he declared himself to be “a non-resident alien” of the United States. In actuality, however, Snipes is a citizen of the United States by virtue of his birth.
In relation to the investigation into possible federal tax fraud, he claimed that he was being singled out by prosecutors in an unjust manner and being used as an example as a result of his notoriety. These types of litigation methods are typical examples of the “Freemen,” “Sovereign Citizen,” or “OPCA” (Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument) category of litigation tactics. They are intended to bog down courtroom procedures with nonsensical arguments and to postpone judgements.
On February 1, 2008, Snipes was found not guilty of the felony counts of conspiring to defraud the government and of submitting a fraudulent claim with the government. He was also found not guilty of the criminal offense of making a false statement to the government. On the other hand, he was found guilty on three counts of failing to file federal income tax forms, which is considered a misdemeanor (and acquitted on three other “failure to file” charges).
In relation to the income tax refund claims that were submitted for Snipes, Douglas P. Rosile and Eddie Ray Kahn, who were both co-defendants in the case, were found guilty of conspiracy and filing a false claim on the charges.
In accordance with section 7203 of Title 26 of the United States Code, Snipes was given a jail sentence of three years on April 24, 2008, for the willful failure to submit federal income tax returns.
In a ruling that was published on July 16, 2010, and consisted of a total of 35 pages, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld Snipes’ convictions.
On December 9, 2010, Snipes reported to a federal prison to begin serving his three-year term. He was incarcerated at the McKean Federal Correctional Institution, which is a federal prison located in the state of Pennsylvania.
[34] The petition for review of Snipes’ case was denied by the Supreme Court of the United States on June 6, 2011. After completing his time under house arrest and being released from federal jail on July 19, 2013, Wesley “Wesley Snipes” Snipes was finally freed from federal custody on April 2, 2013.
Snipes presented the Federal Revenue Service with a compromise offer, but the IRS chose not to accept it. On November 1, 2018, the United States Tax Court found that the IRS did not act inappropriately in rejecting Snipes’ offer. In light of the fact that the notice of federal tax lien that was filed in connection with roughly 23.5 million dollars in federal tax liabilities for the tax year 2001 and the years 2003 through 2006 was allowed to remain active, the lien was placed.
Wesley Snipes Movies
A talent agent saw Wesley Snipes perform in a competition when he was 23 years old and immediately signed him. Wildcats, starring Goldie Hawn, was the picture that marked his first appearance in the film industry. Within the same year, he made a guest appearance on the television show Miami Vice in the episode titled “Streetwise,” playing the role of a pimp who dealt drugs (first aired December 5, 1986).
In the music video “Bad” and the feature film Streets of Gold, both of which were directed by Martin Scorsese and released in 1987, Snipes played the role of Michael Jackson’s adversary. In the same year, he was also under consideration for the character of Geordi La Forge in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation; however, LeVar Burton was ultimately cast in the role.
Spike Lee was impressed by Snipes’s performance in the music video “Bad,” so he decided to cast him in one of his films. Willie Mays Hayes in Major League was the first in a string of box office hits for Wesley Snipes, which began after Snipes turned down a small role in Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing for a larger part as Willie Mays Hayes in that film. Later on, Lee would give Snipes the role of Shadow Henderson, a jazz saxophonist, in Mo’ Better Blues, and he would also put him in the lead role of the interracial romantic drama Jungle Fever.
After that, he starred alongside Christopher Walken in the film King of New York as Thomas Flanagan. In the film New Jack City, which was written especially for him to star in by Barry Michael Cooper, he took on the role of the notorious drug boss Nino Brown. In the film Sugar Hill, which was released in 1994, he also played a drug dealer.
Passenger 57, Demolition Man (alongside Sylvester Stallone), Money Train, The Fan, U.S. Marshals, and Rising Sun are just some of the action movies in which Wesley Snipes has appeared. He has also been in comedy such as White Guys, Can’t Jump, and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! starring Julie Newmar, in which he had a role as a drag queen. Snipes’s most notable dramatic roles were in the films The Waterdance and Disappearing Actions.
He was awarded the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 54th Venice Film Festival for his role in the 1997 film One Night Stand, which was produced by New Line Cinema. Snipes enjoyed his greatest level of financial success with the 1998 film Blade, which has grossed more than $150 million all over the world. The movie was adapted into a television series.
In addition, Snipes was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as well as an honorary doctorate in humanities and fine arts from his alma mater, the State University of New York at Purchase. In the third picture, Blade: Trinity, which Snipes also produced, he reprised his character from the previous film.
In 2005, he filed a lawsuit against the film’s company, New Line Cinema, as well as against the film’s director, David S. Goyer. He claimed that the production company did not pay him his full wage, that he was purposefully excluded from the casting decisions, and that the amount of screen time given to his role was slashed in order to provide more screen time to co-stars Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel.
The lawsuit was eventually resolved, but the terms of the settlement were not made public. There has been discussion over his possible return to the role of Blade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Before 2010, Trinity was his only film to be shown in theaters in the United States.
Later in his career, Wesley Snipes participated in films such as Game of Death, Gallowwalkers, which was released in 2012, and The Contractor, which was shot in Bulgaria and the United Kingdom. Snipes was at one point scheduled to portray one of the four principal roles in the war picture Miracle at St. Anna, which was directed by Spike Lee and released in 2008. Due to legal issues, he was unable to continue working on the film, and Derek Luke was subsequently cast in his part.
Snipes made his return to the acting world in the 2016 film Brooklyn’s Finest, playing the supporting role of Casanova “Caz” Phillips. This was Snipes’ first film to be released in theaters since 2004. Due to the fact that he was not permitted to leave the United States without the permission of the court, he was unable to accept the role of Hale Caesar in the film The Expendables. In 2014, he had a role in the sequel film The Expendables 3, which was released.
Wesley Snipes Networth
Wesley Snipes being an actor, film producer, and martial artist has an estimated net worth of $10.2 million dollars.
Wesley Snipes Book
Talon of God Jul 25, 2017
Wesley Snipes Blade 4
Snipes had his largest commercial success with Blade, which has grossed over $150 million worldwide. The film turned into a series.
Wesley Snipes Vampire Movie
In 1987, both the music video “Bad” directed by Martin Scorsese and the movie film Streets of Gold included Wesley Snipes in the role of the antagonist Michael Jackson must overcome. In the same year, he was also under consideration for the character of Geordi La Forge in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation; however, LeVar Burton was ultimately cast in the role.
Wesley Snipes House
During the terrorist attacks on September 11, Snipes’ apartment was among the many that were damaged as the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers collapsed. At that moment, he was located on the West Coast.
Stallone Wesley Snipes
Demolition Man is an American science fiction action film that was released in 1993 and starred Sylvester Stallone and Wesley. The film marked the directing debut of Marco Brambilla. Both Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes play prominent roles in the movie. On October 8, 1993, the movie was first shown in theaters across the United States.
Wesley Snipes Expendables
The Expendables 3 featured Wesley in a starring role. This is an American action film that was released in 2014 and was directed by Patrick Hughes. Creighton Rothenberger, Katrin Benedikt, and Sylvester Stallone wrote the screenplay. The Expendables 3 is the third film in the franchise and the sequel to both The Expendables (2010) and The Expendables 2. (2012).
Stars such as Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Antonio Banderas, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Kelsey Grammer, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Kellan Lutz, Ronda Rousey, Glen Powell, Victor Ortiz, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger were featured in the ensemble cast.
Wesley Snipes Major League
The movie that Wesley starred in was titled “Major League.” This is a comedy picture that was released in the United States in 1989 and was produced by Chris Chesser and Irby Smith. David S. Ward is responsible for both the script and the direction of the picture. It also stars Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, James Gammon, Bob Uecker, Rene Russo, Dennis Haysbert, and Corbin Bernsen.