Marlon Wayans
Marlon Wayans is an actor, born 1972.
The youngest of the Wayans comedy operation spent the 1990s in the family business: bit parts in his brothers' films, then Loc Dog in Don't Be a Menace, then the run of The Wayans Bros from 1995 to 1999. The parody films that followed, Scary Movie and its sequel, White Chicks, Little Man, Dance Flick, are the reason he can fill an arena and the reason he is badly undersold as an actor.
Because in the middle of that run he took Tyrone in Requiem for a Dream, and it is a frightening piece of work: the only performance in the film that plays its character's hope completely straight. Darren Aronofsky asked him for no jokes at all and got a young man's optimism curdling in real time.
He kept the comedy, and the comedy got repetitive. A Haunted House, its sequel, Fifty Shades of Black and Sextuplets are a formula collecting interest. The recent stretch is more interesting than any of that. Sofia Coppola used him as the straight man in On the Rocks. Air gave him George Raveling and a monologue about carrying a piece of history in his pocket. Respect cast him as Aretha Franklin's first husband, a part with no charm in it whatsoever. He is a far better dramatic actor than his box office has ever required him to be.
Movies (36)
- Scary Movie (2026)
- Scary Movie (2026)
- Scary Movie (2000)
- Scary Movie 2 (2001)
- White Chicks (2004)
- A Haunted House 2 (2014)
- Little Man (2006)
- Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (1996)
- A Haunted House (2013)
- Norbit (2007)
- G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)
- HIM (2025)
- Requiem for a Dream (2000)
- The Heat (2013)
- Air (2023)
- Naked (2017)
- Senseless (1998)
- Fifty Shades of Black (2016)
- Dance Flick (2009)
- Marmaduke (2010)
- Dungeons & Dragons (2000)
- Sextuplets (2019)
- The Ladykillers (2004)
- On the Rocks (2020)
- I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988)
- Scary Movie 7
- Mo' Money (1992)
- The Curse of Bridge Hollow (2022)
- Respect (2021)
- The 6th Man (1997)
TV (9)
Where to start with Marlon Wayans
Requiem for a Dream first, and not as a curiosity. It reframes everything else he has done, because Tyrone is the only person in that film with a plan that might have worked, and Wayans plays the wanting with no laugh line to hide behind. Be warned that the film is punishing.
Then the comedy on its own terms. Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood is the sharpest thing the family ever made, a parody with real affection for what it is parodying. Scary Movie is the commercial peak and holds up better than the imitators it spawned. White Chicks is indefensible and very funny, which is more or less its own thesis. Skip most of what came after and jump to the recent work: Air for the monologue, On the Rocks for the restraint, Respect for proof that the Requiem performance was never a fluke.