The actor Laurence Fishburne talks about his big breaks, how he developed an attitude that held him back professionally - and personally - and how he learned that he needed to grow up.

"I'm finally at ease with myself."

Written by Gail Buchalter

"I gave my life to my work," said Laurence Fishburne. "I didn't realize that until I was 30. I had to be so grown up in my professional life that I wasn't very grown pu in my personal one. It took me a long time to understand that you have to be an adult in real life."

Fishburne, now 38, most recently starred in the sci-fi hit The Matrix, with Keanu Reeves. He was nominated for an Oscar for What's Love Got To Do With It (1993), and he was the winner of a Tony for Two Trains Running and an Emmy for the Fox-TV series Tribeca. And he not only stars in the upcoming film Once in the Life - an adaptation of his sold-out, 1995 Broadway play Riff Raff - he also wrote and directed it.

We met in his publicist's Manhattan office. Fishburne, who lives nearby, was casually dressed in a brown velour shirt tucked into navy slacks. He planted himself in a chair and, except for the ever-changing expression on his face, barely moved for the next two hours. The actor talked about pretending to be an adult and then really becoming one.

"The hard part as a child actor is you don't get to be a child," said Fishburne, who was 10 when he earned his first paycheck in the off-Broadway play In My Many Names and Days. He then spent three years on the TV soap One Life To Live. "I got talked to so often about 'being childish' when I was a child. When I was working, I was often away from school, from my friends. In other words, I was away from my childhood."

Fishburne's mother, Hattie, a math and science teacher, raised him in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, then a working-class neighborhood. She and her husband, Laurence Fishburne Jr., a juvenile corrections officier in Georgia, had separated before the birth of their son. Young Laurence Fishburne III went to public and private schools and, when his career dictated it, his mother provided home tutoring.

His mother also took him to auditions. "My mom was really astute in observing that I was very happy and at home when I was performing. I feel fortunate that she was paying attention."

"Acting was a real escape from what was going on," added Fishburne, who never had any formal training. "I'm still working through some of that stuff. I really felt the absence of my father. But he would visit once or twice a month and take me to the movies. I'd go home and act out the parts. That's partially how I learned to act. It took me six years to realize I wanted it to be my vocation."

He came to that decision when he was 17, after working with the director Francis Ford Coppola for three years on the Vietnam war film Apocalypse Now. At the audition, the 14-year-old Fishburne had lied about his age, easily passing for 16. He ended up in the Philippines, working with Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Dennis Hopper and Frederic Forrest.

"It changed me in so many ways," Fishburne said. "I learned everything I could about acting. It was so exciting. I was completely free and fearless."

His mother, however, was also there, tutoring him. She wasn't happy with his new attitude and called his father to join them in the Philippines. "My dad was the disciplinarian - he was a corrections officer," Fishburne said. "But by then I was 16, almost my full height [6 feet 1], and thought I was somebody. So I wasn't quite as afraid of him as I used to be. I think he was impressed and just wanted to be there."

When he returned to the U.S. in 1978, Fishburne had little in common with his classmates at Lincoln Square Academy. Instead, he hung out with a different sort: "Some of them were ex-dope fiends, one guy had been a bag man," he said. "They were much older than I was. They carried so much stuff with them. I was fascinated. There were the guys who never got off the street corner. My movie [Once in the Life] is about them."

But now Fishburne was having difficulty finding work. His lack of maturity finally was catching up to him. "I had a 1000-yard stare that said, 'If you don't give me that part, I'll kill you,'" he recalled. "It didn't go over big. I'd just spent three years on Apocalypse Now and thought I was he greatest actor. Plus, I was 17 and looked 27."

His harsh attitude and adult looks effectively limited his choices, and Hollywood dictated that he play heavies. He appeared in Death Wish II and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and three more Coppola-directed films: Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club and Gardens of Stone. "It made me a little resentful that I couldn't play parts my own age or the boy next door," he said.

When Fishburne was 23, he married Hajna Moss, a casting director: "She told me, 'You know, you've got a really bad attitude. You go into auditions like people owe you a job. Nobody owes you anything. If you get a job, it's because you were right for the part or you put your best foot forward.'"

"I was like, 'Really, I'm like that?' That gave me the awareness. But the change was gradual. It took me about nine months to figure out what I was doing. I became more reasonable and more at ease with myself. I got rid of the chip on my shoulder."

In 1988, Fishburne landed his biggest, most positive role, playing a college activist in Spike Lee's School Daze. Three years later, he moved into the ranks of leading men with his performance as Furious Styles, a young father determined to turn his son into a responsible man, in John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood. Throughout the late 1980s, he worked nonstop - but it came at a price.

In 1991, his six-year marriage ended. By then he had a son, Langston, and a daughter, Montana. Fishburne aggressively protects the privacy of hi ex-wife and even refused to give the ages of their children. He did, however, discuss some of his problems with relationships.

"I think in relationships with women I'm chicken," he said. "It's the hardest dynamic for me. I know that goes back to the primary relationship - the relationship to Mom." He added warily: "It's just mom stuff." Fishburne's relationship with his mother reportedly has been acrimonious for years. I asked if they were talking. He would only say, "No."

"I did not spend enough time on my personal life, and that's also a big part of why my marriage failed," he said. "When my marriage broke up, I was thrust out in the world on my own. I had to look around and go, 'Hmmm, everything is not OK.' It was one of the hardest times in my life."

Fishburne was 30 when he began three years of therapy. "I kept a journal," he said. "It helped me see my thought process and showed me I was capable of changing. Eventually I could counsel myself. I began to see my strengths and sensitivity."

Acting was another tool he used for emotional growth. In 1990, he played Jimmy Jump-a killer with surprising flashes of charm - in King of New York, a cult favorite. "Jimmy Jump allowed me to express a lot of anger," he said. "I got to take all that emotional stuff - professional and personal - and channel it in a constructive, safe way through this character."

In What's Love Got To Do With It, the film based on Tina Turner's autobiography, Fishburne was her husband, the musician Ike Turner, whom Tina portrayed as a wife-beating, coke-snorting tyrant. But Fishburne made him seem more desperate and out-of-control than evil. "First and foremost," Ike is a human being, which means he's not a monster," Fishburne said. "He has children. There's love inside him. I wanted to honor him as a human being."

His parts since then have been varied, including Higher Learning, The Tuskegee Airmen, Othello and Miss Evers' Boys. Last year, Fishburne appeared on Broadway in The Lion in Winter. He plans to recreate his role as Morpheus in two more Matrix films, scheduled to start shooting later this year.

Fishburne also has found a way to meaningfully use his celebrity. In 1996, he was named a National Ambassador for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, with a special interest in UNICEF's child soldier program, which tries to rehabilitate youngsters in strife-torn countries who've been forced to pick up guns and shoulder adult responsibilities. Fishburne has spoken before members of Congress, traveled to Liberia, where the child soldier program is in full force, and attended fund-raisers across the U.S. "I've never seen anyone so new immediately understand the pressure on these young kids," said Charles Lyons, president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.

Fishburne said he was determined to keep growing as a person. These days, much of his focus is on his children. "When I had to go to my son's sixth birthday party because I wasn't living with him, I realized I was in the same place as my father. I understood what he must have felt, and I've come to forgive him. I've made a monumental effort to be in my children's lives."

"I have a great relationship with my ex-wife. We're raising our babies together, and we will be connected to the grave. I'm not going to fight with her for years because our marriage didn't work out. We've become friends.

"No." Fishburne paused. "Actually, do you know what we've become? Family. We are family."