A Trailblazing Actor, Producer, & Activist
Robert Hooks, born Bobby Dean Hooks on April 18, 1937, in Washington, D.C.’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood, is a pioneering African American actor, producer, director, and cultural activist whose six-decade career has profoundly shaped Black theater, film, and social justice initiatives. As the youngest of five children to seamstress Mae Bertha “Bert” Ward Hooks and railroad worker Edward Hooks, Robert grew up amid the Great Migration’s echoes, with his family hailing from Rocky Mount, North Carolina. His father’s tragic death in a 1939 work accident left the family in hardship, prompting young Robert and his siblings to labor in North Carolina tobacco fields during summers to fund their D.C. schooling. This resilient upbringing, marked by segregation and economic struggle, instilled a lifelong commitment to using the arts for empowerment and healing.
Hooks’ theatrical spark ignited at age nine in 1945, when his sister Bernice, active in community arts, cast him as the lead in The Pirates of Penzance at Francis Junior High School. By 1954, following the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, he relocated to Philadelphia to live with his mother and her second family, experiencing integrated education for the first time at West Philadelphia High School. There, he thrived in the drama club, performing Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett, and graduated in 1956. Forgoing a Temple University scholarship, Hooks trained at the Bessie V. Hicks School of Theatre, honing his craft alongside future stars like Charles Dierkop and Bruce Dern while working as a tailor.
A pivotal moment came in 1959 when Hooks witnessed the Philadelphia tryout of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, igniting his resolve to pursue professional acting. He moved to New York in 1960, debuting on Broadway as Bobby Dean Hooks by replacing Louis Gossett Jr. in A Raisin in the Sun, earning a New York Drama Critics Award, and touring nationally.
Hooks quickly became a Broadway force, replacing Billy Dee Williams in A Taste of Honey and touring with it, then stepping into Jean Genet’s The Blacks (1961–1963) opposite luminaries like James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, Maya Angelou, and Roscoe Lee Browne—replacing Jones himself at one point. He originated Clay in Amiri Baraka’s incendiary Dutchman (1964), adopting the professional name Robert Hooks on Browne’s advice, and earned a Theatre World Award for Where’s Daddy? (1966). Nominated for a Tony as Best Lead Actor in a Musical for the lead in Hallelujah, Baby! (1967), he broke barriers as the first Black actor to play Shakespeare’s Henry V Off-Broadway under Joseph Papp. His stage credits also include Tennessee Williams’ The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore (1964 revival with Tallulah Bankhead) and Ballad for Bimshire (1963).
Hooks transitioned seamlessly to screen work, starring as the cool anti-hero Mr. T. in the 1972 blaxploitation classic Trouble Man, which cemented his “original Mr. T.” moniker. His filmography spans Otto Preminger’s Hurry Sundown (1967), Tennessee Williams’ Last of the Mobile Hotshots (1970), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) as Admiral Morrow, Passenger 57 (1992, directed by his son Kevin), and Seventeen Again (2000). On television, he made history as Detective Jeff Ward in N.Y.P.D. (1967–1969), the first prime-time network drama with a Black male lead, produced by David Susskind. Guest spots included Dynasty (as Dr. Walcott), Backstairs at the White House miniseries, Sophisticated Gents, and a custom episode of Profiles in Courage portraying a young Frederick Douglass to highlight overlooked Black heroes. He hosted the public affairs show Like It Is (1968) and appeared in over 150 productions.
Beyond performing, Hooks is a visionary institution-builder. In 1964, he launched The Group Theatre Workshop, a tuition-free program for urban youth, mentoring talents like Antonio Fargas and Hattie Winston; it later merged with his crowning achievement, the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC). Co-founded in 1967 with Douglas Turner Ward and Gerald S. Krone via a $1.3 million Ford Foundation grant, the NEC revolutionized Black theater over three decades, producing classics like Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, A Soldier’s Play, and The Dream on Monkey Mountain, and launching careers of Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Laurence Fishburne, and Angela Bassett.
Responding to the 1968 D.C. riots after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Hooks founded the D.C. Black Repertory Company (1970–1981), fostering healing through arts and birthing the a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock. This led to The Inner Voices (1971), the U.S.’s first prison arts program at Lorton Correctional Facility, which performed over 500 times and aided inmate Rhozier “Roach” Brown’s 1975 sentence commutation by President Gerald Ford. Later ventures include the Bay Area Multicultural Arts Initiative (1988 board member), Arts in Action (1992 co-founder with Lonne Elder III in South Central L.A.), and the Negro Ensemble Company of Los Angeles (1994–1997, with board stars like James Earl Jones and Richard Roundtree). In 1982, he produced the Emmy-winning PBS special Voices of Our People: In Celebration of Black Poetry.
Inspired by King’s call for artists in the civil rights fight, Hooks wove activism into his work, testifying before Congress on arts funding (solo and with Sidney Poitier and Maya Angelou in 1973) and advocating for multicultural access. His efforts addressed post-riot recovery, prison rehabilitation, and job training in film/TV for underserved communities. Honors abound: Theatre World Award (1966), Tony nomination (1967), Ebony’s American Black Achievement Award (1979), Emmy (1982), Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame induction and Oscar Micheaux Award (1985), NAACP Image and Pioneer Awards for Lifetime Achievement (2005), Living Legend Award from the National Black Theatre Festival (2015), and multiple “Robert Hooks Days” proclaimed in Los Angeles (1986), D.C. (2000, 2018), plus entry into the Congressional Record (2018). In 2021, Emory University archived his career materials, preserving his legacy.
A Democrat since 1960, Hooks is father to seven children, including actor-director Kevin Hooks and filmmaker Eric Hooks, from marriages to Yvonne Hickman and Rosie Lee Hooks. He wed actress-author LorrieGay Marlow in 2008. At 88, Hooks remains a “resource of guiding vision” for Black theater, as scholar Herbert Allen noted, his intergenerational work bridging past struggles to future possibilities. Through barrier-breaking roles and bold institutions, Robert Hooks has not just performed history—he has scripted it for generations.