Ken Foree
“Yeah, militant lumberjacks - I see 'em all the time...on BBC.”
Ken Foree (born February 29, 1948 in Monroeville, PA) is an average African American man who has worked in several occupations throughout his life and has experienced periods of baldness, from infancy to adulthood. He is famous for his leap-year birthday and his ability to pick a fight. He has always been able to talk back to people and deliver one-liners and insults, specifically those he quoted from the movie Cool Hand Luke.
Foree became a popular actor quite by accident when his heroic efforts were caught on film in George Romero's 1978-1979 documentary, Dawn of the Dead.
Career[edit]
Police officer[edit]
Ken Foree joined the police force in 1977, one year before he nearly lost his life saving his hometown from a zombie rampage. Foree and three others were trapped inside a local mall during the attacks, and feared being eaten by the undead creatures. This incident was remarkably captured on film by George Romero, and released in theaters the following year as Dawn of the Dead. The film made unlikely actor Foree a superstar, and he had hoped to follow up his success by taking acting classes and auditioning for more roles.
Pittsburgh Pythons[edit]
After forty-five failed auditions in 1979, Foree left the police force and briefly retired from acting in pursuit of one of his lifelong dreams -- playing basketball with the Pittsburgh Pythons. This was captured on film by Gilbert Moses and released as The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh in 1979. The film quickly reignited Foree's "acting" career, although a) he was not acting, and b) he was uncredited.
Ken's next attempts to take acting classes and win roles proved far more succesful, as he landed guest starring roles on such television series as Kojak, The Dukes of Hazzard, Hill Street Blues, Benson, and Remington Steele. However, he was unable to pay the bills and had to take jobs as a boxer, a driver, a helicopter pilot, and a detective.
Side of the Law[edit]
Ken Foree's big mouth has always gotten him on different sides of the law on several occasions. His most heroic roles were captured on film and television as he struggled with getting his acting career off the ground again.
Down the Drain, Leatherfeace, and Hammer[edit]
Just as Foree's career was going down the drain, Robert C. Hughes called him up with a role in the crime comedy Down the Drain. Released in 1990, Foree won rave reviews as Buckley, the token black guy. This role led to his biggest role since Dawn of the Dead -- that of Daniel Plainview in Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, which was also released in 1990; Foree's character was initially killed off, but due to his popularity in test screenings, his character's fate was changed so that he would survive Leatherface's rampage. The role won Foree his second Academy Award for Best Actor. (His first was for Dawn of the Dead.) A remake of TCM3 entitled, There Will Be Blood, recently won Daniel Day-Lewis a Best Actor Oscar in the Daniel Plainview role in 2008.
Because of his resurgence in popularity, Ken had to chose his roles wisely to stay in the game. For his next role, he portrayed MC Hammer in the biopic, Without You I'm Nothing, which was another 1990 film. Foree's performance as the ruthless oil tycoon-turned-rapper won him another Academy Award in 1991. His co-star Morgan Freeman also took home an award for Best Supporting Actor in the role of Rick James, and the film won Best Picture.
Foree's career was on fire, and scripts kept coming and coming, and he had a tough time sorting out the cream of the crap. His next role, as the Beast in Disney's Beauty & The Beast won him more praise. But his subsequent film, Pong! the Movie, was critically scathed, and was voted by AFI (no, not the band) as the Number 1 worst film of the 1990s, with the Psycho remake at a close second and Super Mario Bros. at a close third. However, Uwe Boll nevertheless felt the need to remake Pong! the Movie in 2005 starring Marlon Brando and Robert Downey Jr. Oddly enough, the reviews for the remake were so godawful, they make the Ken Foree version look like a masterpiece.
Personal life[edit]
Foree slowed down on his roles during the mid-1990s to guest star on TV series and appear in television movies. He had married Sheryl Rockmore and had a son named Kenan in 1978, and he felt he needed to spend more time with them. Kenan himself would become a big star by starring on the Nickelodeon sketch-comedy series All That and also the reality-sitcom Kenan and Kel.
Career comeback[edit]
Ken Foree returned to acting in the critically-acclaimed role of Bono in the movie, The Joshua Tree, based on the classic U2 album. Though he looked nothing like the real Bono, he won yet another Academy Award in 1994.
Critical reviews of Foree in The Joshua Tree:
“Ken Foree radiates with such an awesomeness, that he was such an obvious choice to play the black Bono.”
“Why's a black guy playing Bono?”
“Because Ken Foree owns!”
“Ken Foree was so convincing in The Joshua Tree, that I thought a zombie was gonna jump out and Ken would bust his ass! Oh, wait, that's Dawn of the Dead.”
In 1996, Ken wanted to sell Nickelodeon a reality-sitcom exploiting his son, Kenan, and his best friend, Kel, who were both already stars of Nickelodeon's All That sketch-comedy show. The premise is that Kenan and Kel would come up with crazy schemes and get into all kind of trouble for it. The show was to be called When There's No More Room in the Bottle, the Orange Soda will Soak the Earth. Nickelodeon liked the idea but changed the title to Kenan and Kel. The show was an overnight sensation and became one of Nickelodeon's most popular shows ever, beating SpongeBob SquarePants by lightyears.
Unfortunately, the duo aged out of their contract and the show ended in 2000. Afterwards, Ken found God and became a popular televangelist who reached his peak in 2004 during yet another zombie attack on Monroeville. A clip of his Sunday morning show was featured in the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, which re-ignited Foree's career. At the time of these attacks, Ken's brother, Ving, had taken his old police job.
In 2005, Rob Zombie asked Ken to play the critically-acclaimed and Oscar-winning role of Charlie Altamont in The Devil's Rejects and then again in the critcally-acclaimed role of Big Joe Grizzley in Halloween in 2007. This latter role won him another Academy Award (tied with Javier Bardem), even though Foree wasn't even nominated. That's because Ken Foree is the greatest cult actor of all time!
Foree continues to act and win Academy Awards for every role he plays. He continues to own!
Ken Foree's Birthday[edit]
On February 29, 2000, President Bill Clinton, a longtime Foree fan, signed a document to make Ken Foree's Birthday an official national holiday. The then-President said at the event, "Maybe Ken can come up here and punish Kenan." Just then, President Abraham Lincoln and his army of undead Presidents went on a rampage in front of the White House. Ken Foree jumped to the rescue and annihilated the zombies!