Tyrese Gibson

Tyrese Gibson (birth name: Tyrese Darnell Gibson) has been a double threat as an actor and R&B singer-songwriter since 1998, when he broke into the music scene with his debut album, Tyrese. The same year as his second album, 2000 Watts, dropped—2001—Gibson was cast in the lead of his first feature, the critically-acclaimed Baby Boy, from writer-director-producer John Singleton and co-starring Snoop Dogg, Ving Rhames, and Taraji P. Henson; the movie marked Singleton’s last written movie before his 2019 death, and won a Special Mention Leopard prize in its international premiere in competition at the Locarno Film Festival.

After his third album, I Wanna Go There, appeared in 2002, Gibson landed a co-starring role in the first of two movie franchises with his character of Roman in the Singleton-directed 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), the first sequel to the original 2001 The Fast and the Furious and co-starring Paul Walker, Eva Mendes, and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, finishing with a stunning global gross of $236.4 million.

Tyrese Gibson joined the ensemble of the failed remake (of the 1965 film starring James Stewart and directed by Robert Aldrich), The Flight of the Phoenix (2004), starring Dennis Quaid, Giovanni Ribisi, Miranda Otto, and Hugh Laurie, followed by Gibson’s third starring movie in five years with director Singleton—the successful blaxploitation-influenced Detroit drama, Four Brothers (2005), with Mark Wahlberg, André Benjamin, Garrett Hedlund, Terrence Howard, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Gibson was recruited as a co-star in the Justin Lin-directed military drama, Annapolis (2006), with James Franco, Jordana Brewster, Donnie Wahlberg, and Chi McBride, followed by Gibson’s fourth album drop with the 2006 Alter Ego.

After starring in the critically-trounced action movie, Waist Deep (2006), directed and co-written by actor Vondie Curtis-Hall, Gibson scored a leading role in his second movie franchise with Transformers (2007), opposite Shia LaBeouf and Josh Duhamel, which continued with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) (again, with LaBeouf and Duhamel), and then Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), all of them directed by Michael Bay, earning a combined total global box office of $2.7 billion.

Following the little-seen crime drama, The Take (2007), with Tyrese Gibson co-starring opposite John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, and Rosie Perez, Gibson joined writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson for Death Race (2008), which Anderson conceived as a prequel to Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000 (1975), and co-starring Jason Statham, Ian McShane, and Joan Allen.

Gibson co-starred with Paul Bettany and Lucas Black in co-writer/director Scott Stewart’s supernatural, apocalyptic-themed Legion (2010), receiving terrible reviews but solid box office for Sony Pictures. 2011 was an extremely busy for Gibson, including an album, Open Invitation, as well as movies from both the Transformers (Dark of the Moon) and Fast & Furious franchises—Fast Five, directed by Justin Lin as the series’ “transitional” entry into big-scale action starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Jordana Brewster, and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, and ranking as one of the top movies in the series.

Gibson continued his Roman character in the following Fast & Furious movies over the subsequent decade: Fast & Furious 6 (2013), directed by Lin; Furious 7 (2015), directed by James Wan; The Fate of the Furious (2017), directed by F. Gary Gray; F9 (2021), directed by Lin; and Fast X (2023), directed by Louis Leterrier; the combined box office of Gibson’s Fast & Furious movies up to 2023 was $5.12 billion.

Gibson departed from his usual brawnier roles as part of the ensemble of writer-director Kasi Lemmons’ musical drama, Black Nativity (2013), alongside Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett, Mary J. Blige, and Jennifer Hudson, and was released to poor box office by Fox Searchlight. After Gibson’s sixth album, Black Rose, appeared in 2015, Gibson appeared in one of his few smaller supporting roles in the cop comedy, Ride Along 2 (2016), starring Ice Cube (who also co-produced) and Kevin Hart.

Tyrese Gibson co-starred with Naomie Harris as New Orleans cops in the Deon Taylor-directed thriller, Black and Blue (2019), resulting in middling reviews and box office for Sony Pictures. After the minor thrillers, Rogue Hostage (2021), co-starring John Malkovich and Michael Jai White, as well as Dangerous (2021), with Scott Eastwood, Famke Janssen, and Mel Gibson, Gibson played support to star Jared Leto in Gibson’s first foray in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the critically-trounced and commercially disappointing Morbius (2022), with Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, and Jared Harris.

Gibson joined Terrence Howard and Jeremy Piven in writer-director Dallas Jackson’s thriller, The System (2022), released by The Avenue. In 2023,  alongside Gibson’s busy acting schedule including the wide release of Fast X; writer-director Steven Luke’s World War II, Come Out Fighting, co-starring Kellan Lutz, White, and Dolph Lundgren; co-writer/director Cecil Chambers’ survival drama, Bunker, with Kate Bosworth and Devon Sawa; and the action thriller, The Collective, co-starring Lucas Till, Ruby Rose, and Don Johnson, Tyrese Gibson’s seventh album, Beautiful Pain, was released.

Another action thriller co-starring Gibson and premiering at festivals in 2023 was Bad Hombres, co-starring Thomas Jane, Luke Hemsworth, and Nick Cassavetes.  Tyrese Gibson was cast by writer/producer/director Justin Price opposite Harvey Keitel, Peter Stormare, and Frank Grillo in the Mississippi-set thriller, Hard Matter (date to be announced), followed by Gibson scoring a starring role in the horror-crime drama, Squealer (date to be announced), from co-writer/director Andy Armstrong and featuring Theo Rossi, Wes Chatham and Kate Moennig.

Gibson was then cast in the indie murder mystery from co-writer/co-producer/director K. Asher Levin, Helen’s Dead (date to be announced), co-starring Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Emile Hirsch, and Dylan Gelula, followed by Gibson being cast in the horror-thriller from co-writers and co-producers Anthony and James Gaudioso, The Skeleton (date to be announced), with Bruce Dern, Shawnee Smith, and Taryn Manning.

Gibson joined co-stars Aubrey Joseph, Jane, and Vivica A. Fox in the biopic written and directed by Nicholas Manuel Pino, Bosco (date to be announced), and then Gibson played opposite co-stars Niko Foster, Chad Michael Collins, Harvey Keitel, Danny Trejo, and Mena Suvari in the Art Camacho-directed crime drama, The Wrecker (date to be announced). For the drama about the L.A. Uprising, Gibson joined the late Ray Liotta, Scott Eastwood, and Michael Beasley in co-writer/director Ariel Vromen’s April 29, 1992 (date to be announced).