Actor set to ride 'Fisher' to stardom

By Jeannie Williams
USA Today

Who's hot? Derek Luke Why now? He stars in the title role in "Antwone Fisher," which opened in Hawai'i last weekend.

The six-foot actor gives the kind of dazzling smile that has done so much for stars such as Denzel Washington, his director and co-star.

Luke, 28, has come a long way from practicing expressions in the mirror in his tough neighborhood in Jersey City, N.J., to starring in his first movie, the true story of a troubled young man who joins the Navy and redeems his life.

He has signed with a top Hollywood agency, Creative Artists, and is in "Biker Boyz" with Laurence Fishburne, out this month.

His success follows several years of "just slamming the pavement" in Los Angeles, looking for work, ushering, selling cheap cologne out of his car, taking a few acting lessons. He had three appearances on TV's "King of Queens" and "Moesha" — "three one-liners."

Two years into his California stay, he got a job at the Sony gift shop on the Culver City studio

lot, where he hit it off with another employee, Antwone Fisher. He found out at lunch one day that Fisher was a writer, and Washington wanted to direct a movie about his life. Luke asked Fisher for the script. "I had to be a part of telling this story," Luke says.

Hundreds of actors auditioned to play Fisher, who was born in prison and abandoned by his mother to years of abuse, both emotional and sexual, in foster care.

Cuba Gooding Jr. wanted the role.

He never tires of telling how Washington and producer Todd Black appeared at the gift shop with the news. Fisher was there, too.

"Washington said, 'You got the job, I hired you. You're Antwone.' ... I said, 'That's right!' But I was in shock. I didn't believe it. He said, 'You're it!' I grabbed him and tried to squeeze the juice out of him. Everybody kind of huddled and hugged. It was incredible."

Luke has many scenes with Washington, who plays the Navy psychiatrist who breaks open the wall to Fisher's anger.

He acknowledges that working with the two-time Oscar winner was "a little intimidating." Luke called him "D" to try to get on a more equal footing.

An Oscar nomination has crossed his mind. Like Fisher, he's an optimist: "I believe God is good. I believe the best possible thing can happen."

Luke's mother, unlike Fisher's, had high standards of encouragement: "We grew up royal," he says, despite being on welfare at times.

He has been married to actress Sophia Adelle Hernandez for almost four years.

They met at a seminar about Luke's favorite word, "purpose."