Wesley Snipes

 Wesley Trent Snipes was the son of Marian (Long), an assistant teacher, and SMSGT Wesley Rudolph Snipes (an aircraft engineer). He grew up in the streets of the South Bronx in New York City and there he quickly decided that dance and theatre would be his future career. He was a student at the High School for the Performing Arts (popularized in Fame (1980)). However, the dreams of performing in a musical theatre (and maybe a few commercials) faded after his mother relocated to Orlando, Florida before he was able to graduate. Fortune would have it that he with his two best friends and "Drama class" instructors Mr. S Porro and K. Rugerio, would start a bus-n-truck theatre company (Struttin Street Stuff) which would be instrumental in his high schools (Jones High School) admission into the International Thespian Society, Orlando Chapter and helped lay the foundation for what would later become Dr. Phillips High Schools the theatre arts program. Snipes was a musician and theatre-rooted actor. He was a performer of song-n-dance as well as acrobatics and puppetry in city parks and dinner clubs.