Jacob Latimore
Jacob Latimore is an actor, born 1996.
Latimore came out of Milwaukee as a singer and still is one, releasing his debut album Connection in 2016 while the acting career was already running. He was on screen as a child in Vanishing on 7th Street in 2010 and got his first real lead as Langston in Black Nativity in 2013.
The middle stretch is a familiar pattern for a young Black actor in studio films: the promising one at the edge of somebody else's cast. Jeff in The Maze Runner, Ramon in Ride Along, Raffi in Collateral Beauty. Pleasant work, no room in it. What changed the picture was Detroit, where he plays Fred Temple, one of the young men held against a wall at the Algiers Motel through the film's long central sequence. The part asks him to do almost nothing except be terrified for a very long time in a room full of shouting, and he holds the camera through it.
The Chi is where he has had the most space. Emmett is the role he has played longest, a young man the show has allowed to grow up, screw up, and become the most watchable adult in its ensemble. Around it he has taken the working actor's spread: Kevin in the House Party remake, Calvin in Gully, Dante in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Bobby in Krystal, Bennett in Candy Jar.
Movies (14)
TV (2)
Where to start with Jacob Latimore
Start with The Chi. Emmett is a genuinely rare thing on television, a comic character allowed to carry dramatic weight without the show flattening him into one or the other, and Latimore has had years to build him.
Then Detroit, which is a hard watch and the single best piece of screen acting on his record. He barely speaks in the section that matters. If you want the range instead of the intensity, Black Nativity is the musical showcase and lets him use the actual singing voice, Collateral Beauty is the glossy studio version, and Candy Jar is a small, likeable teen comedy that gives him an ordinary romantic lead for once. The Maze Runner and Gully round it out, the first for scale and the second for the sort of low-budget swing he has kept taking.