ESCAPING THE MATRIX.("Riff Raff" by Laurence Fishburne)

In the history of drama, many plays have been published with an author's note, but Laurence Fishburne's "Riff Raff" is the only one, to my knowledge, that comes with a warning. "Practitioners of the craft, be forewarned," he writes in the 1997 acting edition. "don't fuck around! come correct, come to get down. a 'riff' is a 'riff.' so swing!"

"Swing" is Fishburne's favorite word to describe the nuanced and dynamic force that he brings to his performances. "I mean it in the exact sense that jazz musicians mean it," he explains. " 'Don't mean a thing if it ain't got no swing.' It's got to have a feel, a rhythm, a sense of melody and tempo." In nearly fifty films, Fishburne, with his broad-shouldered swagger, his heavy-lidded almond eyes, and his smoky, wet voice, has made his own eloquent music, swooping between registers of sorrow and joy. "There is hardly an actor of his age around who exhibits more flash, energy, and intelligence," David Thomson writes in "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film." Acting, to Fishburne, means "being fearless--it's throwing yourself off the bridge." He goes on, "Sometimes it's not appropriate; sometimes it may be wrong. But it's gonna be O.K. You're gonna arrive at something that's true. You're gonna fly. You're gonna catch the right fucking updraft, man, and you're gonna go, 'Oh, oh, yes!--this is what I was trying to do.' "

The unjudgmental surrender with which Fishburne applies himself to his roles has produced a collection of riveting character studies--from the callow cannon fodder Clean in "Apocalypse Now" (1979) to the blood-curdling hip-hop killer Jimmy Jump in "King of New York" (1990), the embattled father Furious Styles in "Boyz N the Hood" (1991), the obsessive, abusive Ike Turner in "What's Love Got to Do with It" (1993), and the perp turned man of principle Socrates Fortlow in "Always Outnumbered" (1998). All of these portraits find the epic in the ordinary; they exhibit Fishburne's signature dash and danger. In other words, they swing.

Fishburne's friend Arthur Mendoza, an acting coach who runs the Actors Circle Theatre, in Los Angeles, complains that "swing" is not a strategy for all actors. It's unhelpful, he argues, to tell "broken, emotionally unavailable actors to just let go and fly by the seat of their pants." It works for Fishburne, he explains, because of the "electric current of talent passing through him." He goes on, "He's a chameleon of body, voice, and movement. He'll walk one way with me in West Hollywood at eleven-thirty at night. He'll walk a different way down Madison Avenue in New York. He is so absorbed in his circumstances and his environment. His ear is attuned. His body is attuned. He can mimic and change."

Fishburne's improvisational skills were demonstrated at our first meeting, in New York, last October. At Brasserie 81/2, a cavernous midtown restaurant on West Fifty-seventh Street, he bounded down the circular stairway in a green-and-yellow baseball cap and a sweatsuit, carrying what looked like a gym bag. But the most noticeable thing he brought into the buzzing room was his own specific gravity. Although Fishburne's bearing is statuesque, he is not conventionally handsome. His skin is pitted; the gap between his teeth reads like an exclamation point to every smile or scowl. His forehead is broad, and his cheekbones are high, drawing attention to his eyes, which are alternately brooding and twinkling. The defining quality in Fishburne's demeanor--and his performances--is stillness, a trick he says he learned from watching Clark Gable. His ability to meet the world without noise sharpens both his focus and the power of his presence. This aura of command makes it natural for Fishburne to play both kings and killers. (He was the first African-American to play Othello onscreen.) "He comes to the floor with a character and a dignity--quite the opposite of self-importance," says Sidney Poitier, another model of reserve, who is one of Fishburne's mentors.

At the restaurant, when I mentioned that the happy hour was perhaps a little too happy for us to be able to tape our conversation, Fishburne immediately motioned to me to follow him. I did--up the stairs, through a scrum of pedestrians, and across Fifty-seventh Street, where he stopped at the curb. "How do you feel about motorcycles?" he asked me, eying a gray BMW K1100 GT beside us. "A little scared," I said. He straddled the bike. "Just swing your leg over," he said. I did as I was told, and that was how I found myself, without a helmet, clinging to Fishburne's love handles as we pushed out into the mayhem of Manhattan rush-hour traffic. "Don't worry," he said, as a bus menaced us. "I've had Frank Gehry on the back."

Fishburne learned to ride in 1995, for the action comedy "Fled," and he starred last year in the best-forgotten Western-on-wheels "Biker Boyz." He now owns five motorcycles. Last summer, he took a three-day trip from Miami to Key West and back, and went on a five-day journey from Munich to Milan with the Guggenheim Motorcycle Club--a group of high rollers who enjoy playing low riders, among them Jeremy Irons, Dennis Hopper, and Thomas Krens, the director of the Guggenheim. It's not the speed of a motorcycle that Fishburne finds seductive but the freedom it offers. "It has to do with being able to move around under one's own steam," he said. "There are no minders, no assistants, no friends, no girlfriends. I don't have to talk to anybody; I have to make sure I survive!" He added, "This is how I gather stuff for myself."