And the whole thing about me laughing and joking is because I'm very lucky to do what I love.

Hello.

I'm Anthony Mackie, and this is the timeline of my career.

Okay, Well, first I was at Juilliard and my friend Michael Devil Win was writing a play called Up Against the Window, and the play was about to park.

I played to park.

It was amazing.

We did it at Juilliard.

Crushed it.

Jim Nicola from New York Theatre Workshop came to see the play said, This is great.

I'm gonna move this off Broadway.

So he takes it my senior year, actually.

Are we do?

Up against the wind at New York through the workshop, Massive hit were on the cover of The New York Times.

It was amazing.

Everybody was like, Oh, my God, how these Julie, Our kids doing something so contemporary, So this'll wonderful.

Lady named Mali.

Finn saw the play.

She introduced me to Curtis Hanson, who directed eight Mile and I auditioned for Makai Phifer part but Makai Phifer is really famous, and I was a guy who had just done a play.

So Curtis called me and was like, Yo, not to be rude.

There's a smaller role in the movie with four lines.

I want you to play this role.

I'm like, Bet.

So I go to Detroit.

We start eight mile and I got the hang out with Eminem for three months.

It was a mason.

I was.

I was 21 years old.

I was only supposed to be here for a short period of time.

As the shoot evolved, Curtis started developing my character, changing my character, adding more scenes.

So Papa Doc went from, like, two scenes too integral part in the story of eight.

So you see a group of guys in our early twenties honestly becoming lifelong friends on screen before your eyes.

And that's what a movie worked so well.

I mean, everybody who was in eight miles they're still my friends, and I was 20 years that you decided to start experimenting with your sexual orientation while our wedding invitation both family does She hate me was interesting because I did a movie with Spike before she hate me, called sucker Free City, which, as an actor, you know when you've done good work and I felt like, you know, sucker Free City with some of the finest work I've done as an actor.

It was supposed to be develop and grow into this amazing Siri's like Showtime's answer for HBO's The Wire.

We crushed that project Absolutely Don't care what nobody say.

We crushed that project, and from that Spike offers she hate me to Jeffrey Wright.

Jeffrey Wright said no, and I was dead the day Jeffrey said no, I was like, Damn, that's messed up, man.

Jeffrey, don't work with you.

We work really well together.

Two days later, he calls and offers me.

She hate me, and it was It was It was a huge learning experience.

I've never I've never seen anybody with the drive, The focus, the passion that Spike Lee has.

That was the first time me seeing somebody really appreciating the love for what we do, the appreciation of the desire to be able to show up every day and do it to the highest of their ability.

You know, Spike was the 1st 1 there every day.

He was the last one to leave every day, and I just I've never you know, I'd never had never seen it before him being spike aside, just his desire.

And his work ethic kind of has fueled me for the past 15 years.

I mean, how do you do it?

You know, take the ribs.

The Hurt locker was interested in many different ways because I was in North Carolina doing another movie that subsequently never came out.

I was in L A before I started in North Carolina, and Katherine and Mark Boal and Greg Shapiro, who produced it.

The four of us had a meeting, and they wanted me to play the other rule and had already cast Jeremy.

And it took us seven months to shoot this movie in North Carolina.

That project went over two months, so I'm begging them like, please, hold on, please.

Like please, just wait.

I'ma finish this on this date now, like, now we gotta go.

We gotta go.

We gotta go.

We're sorry.

They offered it toe another actor, and he said no.

Then they came back and they said, Look, if you can leave on this day, we can do it.

So I wrapped that project at night, drove to the airport, got on the airplane and went to Amman, Jordan.

Next day, the greatest experience of my career Is that dude saying no.

I was very excited to have the opportunity to work with Jeremy, So when I met with Catherine, you know, she wanted me to play a smaller role.

And my thing was, war has no race.

War has no face.

War has no name.

War has no sex.

War has death.

So let me play the best character I can play.

So that was a perspective on which we talked, and she gave me the opportunity to play Sanborn.

And, you know, it was It was It was interesting because I had known Kathryn's work for a long time.

I loved her movies.

I love your style.

I loved everything about her career that I had experience, so I wanted to be a part of that, and I tend to work better with female directors.

Just a great experience for me every single time and what Catherine was able to do with the three of us.

You know, Brian Garrity, Jeremy Renner and myself.

It was it was It was amazing.

I mean, we were in the belly of the beast.

We shot that three miles away from the Iraqi border when it was not cool for people to go to Iraq.

This was 2007.

If anybody tells you that they thought the Hurt locker was gonna be an award women fit winning film.

On the day we wrap, they're lying to you.

No one knew what that movie was gonna be.

Nobody expected that movie to blow up the way it did.

It was a very hard shoot.

It was a very difficult two and 1/2 months.

You know, when we got nominated because I was with Jeremy, like on whatever morning Show that Waas when we got nominated.

And then when we were at the Oscars, like George Clooney was right there, All these people were right there, you know, like Holly Berry.

So it was crazy, right?

So, you know, when we won, I turned O'Brien because Brian and I was sitting way in the back, so I turned to bribe him like you were going on stage because we can't go on stage.

No one goes.

Let's take it like we're going on stage.

So they're like, we won.

So I Grant Bryant and we're running up and Barry sitting there, The DP saw Granberry and we're running up.

So all of us rushed the stage and I turned around and is Tom Hanks.

And I'm like, Fuck Tom Hayes, you weren't in the movie.

What do you doing here?

So there's a video of me like hugging and kissing Tom Hanks and him being like what you're doing, kid.

And it was Nobody expected that it was crazy.

I got the kiss.

Tom Mix, Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers.

I kind of put that together.

Must have freaked you out.

Coming home after the whole defrosting thing takes some getting used.

I had no experience with comics whatsoever.

I didn't read comic books.

Comic books weren't my thing.

My brother had crates and crates of comic books and used to beat me up because I would rip his comic books and that was it.

So when I found out about the Falcon, when I got the opportunity to meet with Joe and Anthony Russo and, uh, name or at some random weird hotel in L.

A.

By the pool eaten cops Alec, which who knew what cops al it was at that time.

It's a great experience.

That's when you know you made it.

When somebody buys you a chopped salad, I'm like, So you're gonna bring us Alan and I got to chop it up myself.

I'm paying you to chop up my salad.

Why do we have to chop my salad anyway?

So that's rich people stuff.

When I started in this business, I told my agent at the time I wanted to do a Western because I grew up loving Clint Eastwood and all of his westerns and gun smoke and Silverado and I wanted to be a superhero.

Those are my two things.

Other than that, it's free game.

And then I was very upset because Morgan Freeman took my role and Unforgiven.

That should have been me.

But I'm gonna get my Western with Clint Eastwood.

And but it was It was monumental.

The Falcon has been my Oscar.

I feel like they're a few rewards that could justify a career, a body of work, the way Marvel has entrusted with me this character not just for the African American community but just the veteran community in general, I think what that character represents, not only to marvel but to America is very important.

And I'm very honored to play that room.

You know, if you want, I could come with you.

Good.

The Russos are quite brilliant in the way they handled the model franchise and specifically to Captain America storyline.

You show up for two days, you shoot one scene because I wasn't in much of either.

But you show up for one day.

You should have seen your show for a week.

You shoot a scene, you go in, you do a tiara and you record a line.

You have no idea where is gonna fit on and how it's gonna work.

But they take all this footage and make this makes make this amazing store, you know?

And when the first time I saw the movie, I didn't know how it was gonna play out.

So the last scene in Avengers in game I'm at the theater with my son and the movie ends and my son goes, Dad, what's up?

He goes, Where are you, Captain America?

I think so.

He goes, He goes cool.

Like that's it like that.

That's all.

That's all I get like you should be fine, Cool, cool.

You don't cry.

I don't cry.

I'm not gonna cry.

He's just like, so nothing.

So all night we're hanging out, they get tired, Take him home, put him to bed.

A week later, he calls me bawling and he's like, dead your Captain America like, Yeah, do.

So he's like, I just I didn't know that they're so amazing.

I'm so proud of you.

So then I start crying and you're proud of me is like a predator like a proud of you, buddy.

But that's, you know, it's it's funny.

As a parent, you do so much and all you walk is the the approval of your kids like nobody else matters.

Like I don't care what anybody else on the Internet says.

My son said it was cool, So it's cool, you know, And that's been the biggest thing with Marvel in all of these.

You know, you realize, you know it's an opportunity for you to spend time with your kids.

Like every marble premiere.

I get to take my son and we sit.

We pop car and we watch the movie, you know, when we talk about it afterwards and you know, he says His favorite part.

I said, My favorite part.

That's kind of what this character has become has been away for my sons and I to bond over movies.

I think about all the good we can do for the community taking it to the man.

That's exactly what we're going to do.

When we were shooting the Adjustment Bureau, we were on the top of 30 Rock shooting a scene with Matt and Emily and Joel, who's no fees editing partner comes up to me and starts telling me this amazing story.

I was like he was working on doing the movie and he was, you know, I told him anything he could do.

I wanted to be a part of.

It was an amazing story, should be told.

Here we are.

10 years later, we got it done and we were able to make it.

I did a movie called Gangster Squad, where I played a cop from the Valley side of L.

A, and he usedto police a club called Club Alabam Club.

Alabam was owned by the character who Samuel Jackson plays in The Banker.

That's my window like if you have a movie in the 19 fifties 19 sixties.

I'm your black guy.

I didn't kill that wind.

I don't know about everything else, but that those two decades, that's my window.

Sam has been a presence in my life in a mentor and a voice in my head for the past 12 years.

It's phenomenal but intimidating and scary when you get to sit across from someone you admire so much So about the third day of shooting, I realized every time I talked to him, I called him Samuel Jackson.

Like the third or fourth day of shooting, I was like, Yo, Samuel Jackson, you want some coffee?

He goes.

Stop saying my whole name.

No.

What?

Oh, Jesus!

Pissed off Samuel Jackson.

Wait, Stop called him said it was amazing.

I can't do this anymore.

This wild goose chase across the stars running after you all to carbon Season two.

I play the character of Takeshi Cold match.

Last season it was Joe Kingman and I'm taking over for the second seat.