Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

So true is the say­ing that be­tween every rock there is a di­a­mond. From the hills of Suc­cess Vil­lage, Laven­tille, in­ter­na­tion­al ac­tor Sul­li­van Walk­er shines and con­tin­ues to proud­ly fly the T&T flag high. What start­ed off as a sim­ple gig in a lo­cal com­e­dy at the ten­der age of nine, has opened doors for Walk­er, land­ing him ma­jor roles in films with some of Hol­ly­wood's biggest singers and ac­tors–among them rap sen­sa­tion Cur­tis '50 Cents' Jack­son and Tom Cruise. Walk­er, like some of our lo­cal celebri­ties, has def­i­nite­ly been in­duct­ed to our lo­cal hall of fame. The boy from crime-rid­den Laven­tille con­tin­ues to sparkle, giv­ing us hope that all is not gloom. On­ly re­cent­ly the fa­ther of one re­turned to his home­land and held au­di­tions for a tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial at Trinidad Dance The­atre in San Fer­nan­do. There is no lim­it to the play­wright/di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Ex­pe­ri­ence The­atre of Amer­i­ca tal­ent as he has al­so launched his first book en­ti­tled Caribbean Woman, that tells the sto­ry of life in the Caribbean. Tak­ing time from his hec­tic sched­ule dur­ing his vis­it to T&T, Walk­er sat with the Sun­day Guardian re­flect­ing on the some of the many chal­lenges he faced to reach star­dom. It has been no turn­ing back for the young chap who mi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States more than 30 years ago. A move one can on­ly de­scribe as a bless­ing in dis­guise.

Twist of fate

While at­tribut­ing his suc­cess to the head of the San Fer­nan­do Dra­ma Guild, James Lee­wah who spot­ted his tal­ent, it was the pop­u­lar Scout­ing for Tal­ent Show that paved the way for Walk­er's big break. At the time though, it did not seem much for a dis­ap­point­ed Walk­er who placed third in the com­pe­ti­tion with his mono­logue that de­pict­ed the ills in so­ci­ety. Ac­cept­ing his prize–a trip to New York–with a heavy heart, lit­tle did Walk­er know that luck was wait­ing on the doorsteps for him. "I was very up­set when I placed third. I won both the pre­lim­i­nary and se­mi fi­nal rounds so I had my heart set on win­ning the com­pe­ti­tion. I thought I did well but I was on­ly able to cap­ture the third spot. I took one year to make up my mind to de­cide if I was go­ing be­cause I was re­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed," he re­called.

It was bare­ly one month af­ter Walk­er mi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States in Au­gust 1969 that he start­ed per­form­ing in youth clubs in New York.

"I want­ed to be some­one. I want­ed to do some­thing in my life; act­ing con­sumed me. I want­ed the world to be my class­room.

I re­alised that get­ting a trip to the Unit­ed States was the best thing that could have hap­pened to me be­cause I could not have af­ford­ed to go abroad on my salary as a school­teacher. "The irony is that Trinida­di­ans saw these plays as hu­mor­ous, but Amer­i­cans did not see the hu­mor, in essence it was a sad sto­ry for them." One af­ter the oth­er doors be­gan to open for Walk­er; he got the sec­ond lead role in a play Sea­son in the Con­go. "I was mak­ing $75 dol­lars per week and the play ran for three months. I thought I had ar­rived, ob­vi­ous­ly I did not know the busi­ness. Act­ing in New York calls for you to pay dues; I did not un­der­stand how the busi­ness worked so I had o fall back on what­ev­er job I got. Ba­si­cal­ly I did what was le­gal to make a liv­ing and that even in­clud­ed work­ing in a mail­room de­liv­er­ing pack­ages. When I got my union card I start­ed to see my way," Walk­er said.

The big break

Walk­er re­called that in 1986 he was do­ing a play called A Doll's House in At­lanta when the cast­ing of the pop­u­lar Bill Cos­by Show called and of­fer him a job. "I was asked to act as Cos­by's best friend but I was un­able to get out of my con­tract. It was ex­act­ly one year af­ter the cast­ing called again and I was of­fered a job as a cab dri­ver on a se­ries called Where I Live, which aired on ABC tele­vi­sion. That led to a job with Steven Spiel­berg and I act­ed in an­oth­er se­ries called Earth Two and then I al­so had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to act with Tom Cruise in the hit film The Firm. This was a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for me which opened more doors."

But nev­er in Walk­er's wildest dreams did he ever imag­ine that he would have been act­ing with one of Hol­ly­wood's biggest rap­pers. He beat out Gram­my win­ners like Samuel L Jack­son, Lau­rence Fish­burne and Jim Browne to get the part of 50 Cents grand­fa­ther in the hit film Get Rich or Die Try­ing. "This was a very sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for me be­cause at the time 50 Cents was the biggest rap­per. I was cho­sen for the job over some of the biggest ac­tors; it felt re­al­ly good," he said.

Re­jec­tion is part of life

But it was not al­ways smooth sail­ing for Walk­er who ad­mit­ted that he was forced to deal with sev­er­al bouts of dis­ap­point­ment. "For every film I got there was a film I want­ed and just did not get. It has def­i­nite­ly not been an easy road. I had my heart bro­ken and just had to pick up the pieces and move on. The thing about act­ing is that you have to learn to take re­jec­tion well. If you can­not take re­jec­tion you may as well throw your hat in­to the ring. It is not about giv­ing up but push­ing to get what you want," the suc­cess­ful ac­tor end­ed.