Laurence Fishburne learned to perform at his mother's knee, where, according to a close friend, he played "the houseboy, the servant, the trophy son, and the bad boy," in accordance with her volatile mood swings.
Young Fishburne also cultivated the persona of a street tough (what he later called his "cool thing") -- by standing on corners with candy cigarettes dangling from his mouth, pretending to be "bad."

[On the basketball courts, Fishburne stood up to older bullies by imitating their menace. "I would shut them down and put them off," he recalled. "I didn't find out until I was grown that they thought I was, like, some gang leader."]

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