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Academy-Award winning actor Forest Whitaker has had a long and celebrated career in Hollywood ever since he graduated from the University of Southern California with a BFA in Drama. Interestingly, Whitaker didn’t enter college specifically for acting. His original major was opera. He landed his first role while he was still in college in a film called TAG: The Assassination Game, starring Linda Hamilton and Robert Carradine. From there Whitaker appeared in a “blink, and you might miss him” role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He was still in college at USC during these two roles.
Whitaker really broke through in the 1988 Clint Eastwood-directed Charlie Parker biopic Bird. The biggest success of Whitaker’s long career happened in 2006 when he won the SAG, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Academy Awards for his role as the brutal dictator from Uganda, Idi Amin, in The Last King of Scotland.
Most recently, Whitaker has turned his talents to the small screen, appearing in the television series Godfather of Harlem and Extrapolations. His next film is Havoc from the great Gareth Evans, in which he co-stars with Tom Hardy and fellow USC alumni Timothy Olyphant.
Updated March 20th, 2023: If you're a fan of Forest Whitaker and enjoy his performances, you'll be happy to know that this article has been updated with additional content and even higher quality. For some odd reason, our writers failed to mention two of his best performances, The Crying Game and especially the Jim Jarmusch masterpiece Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai. While the films in this list are wonderful, the editor suggests you watch the aforementioned Whitaker titles to see his true range and talents.
To include every outstanding role Forest Whitaker has performed would make this a very long article. We've left out some obvious ones like Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, The Crying Game, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and focused instead on some of his biggest, most impactful roles. With that having been said, let’s take a look at the best Forest Whitaker movies to date.
10 Out of the Furnace
The Pale Blue Eye director brought us Out of the Furnace, his second feature film following the triumph that was Crazy Heart. While certainly not Whitaker’s best showing, he produces a steady display in a supporting capacity as a cop, Chief Wesley Barnes. The film follows Russell Baze’s (Christian Bale) search for his brother Rodney (Casey Affleck), who has mysteriously disappeared, and Whitaker shows everybody up with his masterfully quiet performance..
9 The Great Debaters
A film that champions Black voices, 2007’s biographical drama, The Great Debaters follows the story of a Black school, and more specifically a teacher who inspires his students to set up a school debate team. A movie set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the film examines the hardship experienced by the repressed black community in the heart of Texas in 1930s America. Whitaker plays Dr. James Farmer Sr., the father of James Farmer Jr. and a prominent theologian and author, and is exquisite.
8 American Gun
American Gun is a powerful movie about the effect guns have on the lives of Americans, structured in three segments. Whitaker appears as a high school principal in Chicago who is dealing with the growing number of guns his students are bringing to campus and the imminent danger that presents. Whitaker shows equal parts authority and empathy for the situation his students are in on the rough streets of Chicago.
7 Arrival
As the Earth represents an inconsequential molecular dot when attempting to comprehend the sheer scale of the universe, it seems almost impossible that there isn’t some form of life out there. 2016’s Arrival addresses that very subject, and the idea that the life out there finds us before we find them.
Directed by the sensational Denis Villeneuve, the sci-fi flick concerns a group of aliens that arrive on Earth in their peculiar spaceship. Tasked with deciphering their language, linguistic expert Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) must make this unprecedented translation. Forest Whitaker plays the likable Colonel Weber, the Army leader responsible for overseeing the entire operation.
6 Platoon
Oliver Stone’s Vietnam War epic, Platoon is feasibly the best war film of the 1980s, and certainly one of the greatest Vietnam War films of all time. The film explores the true cost of war and the brutality that was endured by the American troops in the gnarly jungles of Vietnam.
The anti-war film deals with loss, needless bloodshed, and patriotism through the words of a young soldier, Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen), based on Oliver Stone himself, who finds himself in a perpetual tug of war with two superiors, one good, and the other evil. Forest Whitaker portrays Big Harold, a key part of the 25th Infantry, who epitomizes the suffering undergone by all involved in acts of war.
5 Black Panther
Black Panther was a runaway hit when it came out in 2018 and catapulted the late Chadwick Boseman to super stardom. Forest Whitaker appropriately played an elder statesman of the tribe facing off against a rival tribe for dominance. The cast of Black Panther took home the SAG Award for Best Ensemble for this film. Whitaker's character is a sort of Obi-Wan Kenobi type — wise, measured, and to be respected.
4 Good Morning, Vietnam
Forest Whitaker has appeared in a number of great military films not mentioned here, but one of his first (following the excellent Platoon) was Good Morning Vietnam, which also starred the late, great, Robin WIlliams in an iconic role in his career. Whitaker plays an American soldier who works at the radio station on the base in Vietnam, where Williams' character broadcasts his manic comedic radio shows. Whitaker's facial expressions as he watches Williams (who more than likely improvised much of the radio show parts of his performance) are truly priceless.
3 The Butler
In Lee Daniels' The Butler, Forest Whitaker plays a butler at the White House who served in that role for eight presidents. During the butler's tenure at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he has a front row seat to history through the years of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the incredible social changes that the U.S. (and the world) went through in the 1960s and 1970s.
The film also shows how the butler's family life was impacted by his job. Whitaker was nominated for a SAG Award as Best Actor for this role, in which he gives his all and embodies the transformations of aging.
2 Bird
Clint Eastwood's biopic Bird was Forest Whitaker's very first lead role in a film. He plays, of course, legendary saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker. Whitaker was only 27 when he performed in Bird, and he pretty much channeled Charlie Parker in this role.
To prepare for the role, Whitaker moved into an apartment that only contained a bed, a couch, and a saxophone, doing extensive research on Parker and also took sax lessons. Critics called his performance "transcendent." Whitaker was nominated for the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988, and he also received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance.
1 The Last King of Scotland
In The Last King of Scotland, Forest Whitaker had his biggest and most successful role to date as the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada. The film focuses on the period in time when a hijacked plane full of primarily Israeli citizens lands in Uganda. Terrorists from his regime took the passengers as hostages until Israel launched a secret mission to rescue them.
While Whitaker often plays gentle characters with a high moral code, in this film, his character was the polar opposite, and he went to deep, dark places for the larger-than-life dictator. Whitaker won the Academy Awards, Golden Globe, BAFTA, SAG, and many other critics awards for his portrayal.