Fast Company
By: Joe Berkowitz
It might not be immediately clear where from, but chances are you know Terry Crews. Perhaps you saw him trading tough-guy banter with Sylvester Stallone in The Expendables or dispensing quiet wisdom as Will McAvoy's bodyguard, Lonny, in The Newsroom. You may have seen him flexing for Old Spice during a commercial break or, more recently, as action-averse desk jockey Terry Jeffords on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Even if you'd studiously avoided all these venues, however, Crews's face and Herculean muscle mass will have likely carved a niche in your subconscious, somehow. The actor's shotgun-spray approach to working has made him a force that's impossible to ignore.
When Terry Crews was courting his wife some 25 years ago, he explained to her the blueprint of his future. First, he was going to play in the NFL and then he was going to make movies. Before he had a football scholarship, Crews had an art scholarship--a fact belied by his physique, both then and now. In any case, this career prognostication proved rather prescient. Crews was drafted into the NFL in 1991 and continued to play on various teams for six years. Toward the end of his football tenure, Crews and a friend made a film called Young Boys, Incorporated, and it was then that he fell in love with filmmaking. After retiring, he decided to uproot and move to Los Angeles to see if he could make it in movies.
Crews's first real role wasn't that far removed from organized sports; he played a character on an American Gladiators-style TV show called Battle Dome. “It was kind of like grand theater," the actor says. "I was playing this character named G-Money, and I was this big bad warrior and I loved it. Once the crowd started screaming and the lights started going I was like 'My God--I think I’ve found my calling.'”
Since that first role, Crews has never looked back. He managed to make the leap into action movies, starting with the Schwarzenegger flick, The Sixth Day, and transition into comedy with the Jamie Kennedy spoof Malibu's Most Wanted. Over the years since, Crews has worked with everyone from Adam Sandler to Aaron Sorkin. It's not the big roles that stand out the most when looking at the actor's resume, though: it's the sheer breadth and variety of roles, including his new one as author of the forthcoming book, Manhood. Fresh off of the Golden Globe win for the sitcom he co-stars in, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Crews talked to Co.Create about the constantly evolving path of his career and the benefits of trying to do it all.
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