Mahershala Ali
Birthdate: February 16, 1974 (52 Years Old)
Birthplace: Oakland, California, USA
Mahershala Ali (birthname: Mahershalalhashbaz Gilmore) is one of the most acclaimed screen actors of his generation as well as the two-time Oscar winner (for Best Supporting Actor in 2017 and 2019), and starred in his first feature role in director/writer Daniel Klein’s indie mockumentary, Taste the Revolution, which was filmed in 2001 but not screened (first at the New Orleans Film Festival) until 2024, but it took another seven years for Ali to appear on the big screen in the film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), directed by David Fincher, adapted by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord and starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas and Tilda Swinton, winning three Oscars after a release by Paramount Pictures (U.S./Canada) and Warner Bros. (international) returning a weak $336 million (on $167 million costs).
Ali landed two small supporting roles in director/writer/producer Wayne Kramer’s crime drama for The Weinstein Company, Crossing Over (2009), starring Harrison Ford, Ray Liotta, Jim Sturgess and Ashley Judd, and 20th Century Fox’s commercially successful, $127-million-grossing sci-fi thriller and standalone sequel, Predators (2010), starring Adrian Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Walton Goggins and Laurence Fishburne under Nimrod Antal’s direction.
Ali next appeared in a significant supporting role in director/co-writer Derek Cianfrance’s crime drama, The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), co-written by Ben Coccio and Darius Marder and starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, and Ray Liotta, grossing a solid $47 million (against $15 million costs) for Focus Features after premiering at the Toronto Film Festival. Ali joined revered American independent director-writer John Sayles in a role for the crime drama, Go for Sisters (2013), with LisaGay Hamilton, Yolonda Ross, Edward James Olmos (who also produced), Harold Perrineau, Isaiah Washington, and Hector Elizondo, and released to little business by Cinema Management Group.
Mahershala Ali next appeared in the neo-Nazi-themed drama, Supremacy (2014) with Joe Anderson, Dawn Olivieri, Danny Glover, Derek Luke, Julie Benz and Anson Mount under Deon Taylor’s direction, and then Ali was cast in his first blockbuster project in both The Hunger Games: Mockingjay-Parts 1 (2014) and Part 2 (2015), directed by Francis Lawrence and based on Suzanne Collins’ best-selling novel series, and starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci and Donald Sutherland, and grossing a cumulative $1.4 billion for distributor/producer Lionsgate.
Ali co-starred in director/co-writer Justin Tipping’ debut feature, Kicks (2016), proving a box-office dud for distributor Focus World, and then Ali landed his most visible role to date as co-star with Matthew McConaughey, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Keri Russell in director/writer/producer Gary Ross’s Civil War drama, Ali Free State of Jones (2016), earning only $25 million against $50 million costs for STX Entertainment. Ali had his career breakthrough—and his first Supporting Actor Oscar--with his triumphant supporting performance in director/writer Barry Jenkins’s Best Picture-winning drama based on Alvin McCraney’s play, Moonlight (2016), starring Trevante Rhodes, André Holland, Janelle Monáe, Jharrel Jerome and Naomie Harris, premiering at the Telluride Film Festival and released by producer/distributor A24 to a sensational $65.2 million return on a $4 million budget.
Ali appeared in another smash hit Best Picture nominee opposite Taraji P. Henson in director/co-writer Theodore Melfi’s dramatization of Margot Lee Shetterly’s non-fiction book, Hidden Figures (2016), co-starring Octavia Spencer and Monáe, with Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Aldis Lodge, and Glen Powell earning 20th Century Fox a knockout $236 million (on $25 million costs). Mahershala Ali’s string of appearing in Best Picture-winning or nominated movies continued with director/co-writer/producer Peter Farrelly’s Civil Rights-era comedy-drama, Green Book (2018), for which he won his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar and co-starred with Viggo Mortensen, and scored a dazzling $322 million gross for Universal Pictures after premiering at the Toronto Film Festival.
Ali took on his first voice performance in feature animation with the role of Spider-Man’s dad, Aaron, in the Sony/Columbia/Marvel smash-hit trilogy, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), a voice cameo in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), and in Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse (2027), with Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Bryan Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin, Nicolas Cage, and Liev Schreiber, under the co-direction of Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman.
Ali co-starred with Julia Roberts (who also produced), Ethan Hawke, and Myha’la in director/writer/producer Sam Esmail’s intimate disaster drama adapted from Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel, Leave the World Behind (2023), with Kevin Bacon, and released theatrically and on streaming by Netflix. Ali was part of the colorful cast of the cyberpunk action movie based on the manga series by Yukito Kishiro, Alita: Battle Angel (2019), directed by Robert Rodriguez, co-written (with co-writer Laeta Kalogridis) and produced by James Cameron and co-starring Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Ed Skrein and Jackie Earle Haley, grossing $405 million (on $200 million costs) for 20th Century Fox.
Mahershala Ali joined another movie franchise as co-star of a revamped Jurassic Park entry, Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025), playing a covert op leader with co-star Scarlett Johansson, with Jonatha Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, and Ed Skrein under Gareth Edwards’s direction and produced (on an estimated $180 million budget) and released by Universal Pictures. Ali took on a non-Spider-Man voice role in an animated movie for animation company Laika’s ambitious, years-in-the-making stop-motion movie version of author Colin Meloy’s and artist Carson Ellis’s 2011 novel, Wildwood (2026), directed by Travis Knight and written by Chris Butler, and co-starring the voice cast of Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Carey Mulligan, Awkwafina, Angela Bassett, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Amandla Stenberg, Tom Waits and Richard E. Grant.
Ali starred in director/writer/producer Bassam Tariq’s action movie, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (date to be announced), with John Cho and Giancarlo Esposito, produced by Orion Pictures/Two & Two Pictures and released by Amazon MGM Studios.
Personal life
Mahershala Ali was born and raised in Oakland, California, primarily by his mother, Willicia Goines, an ordained Baptist minister (his father, Phillip Gilmore, left the family when Ali was a small child). Ali attended Saint Mary’s College in the East Bay, where he played for the college basketball team and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communications. Ali then graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Artswith and Master’s degree in Acting. Ali has been married to producer/actor/composer Amatus Karim Ali since 2013; the couple has one child, Bari. Ali’s height is 6’ 2”. Ali’s estimated net worth is $12 million.
Mahershala Ali Movies
Actor
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Previous (11)
- 2025 |
Jurassic World Rebirth
asDuncan Kincaid
Five years post-Jurassic World: Dominion (2022), an expedition braves isolated equatorial regions to extract DNA from three massive prehistoric creatures for a groundbreaking medical breakthrough.
- 2023 |
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
asUncle Aaron
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Miles Morales catapults across the multiverse, where he encounters a team of Spider-People charged with protecting its very existence. When the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles must redefine what it means to be a hero.
- 2019 |
Alita: Battle Angel
asVector
A deactivated cyborg's revived, but can't remember anything of her past and goes on a quest to find out who she is.
- 2018 |
Green Book
asDr. Donald Shirley
A working-class Italian-American bouncer becomes the driver for an African-American classical pianist on a tour of venues through the 1960s American South.
- 2018 |
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
asUncle Aaron
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
A Brooklyn teenager unexpectedly becomes Spider-Man and discovers he’s not the only one. Pulled into a collapsing multiverse, he must team up with alternate versions of the hero to stop a catastrophic threat. What begins as chaos turns into a powerful journey about identity, responsibility, and learning to believe you’re enough.
- 2016 |
Free State of Jones
asMoses
A disillusioned Confederate Army deserter returns to Mississippi and leads a militia of fellow deserters and women in an uprising against the corrupt local Confederate government.
- 2016 |
Hidden Figures
asColonel Jim Johnson
Three female African-American mathematicians play a pivotal role in astronaut John Glenn's launch into orbit. Meanwhile, they also have to deal with racial and gender discrimination at work.
- 2016 |
- 2016 |
- -- | The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2as Boggs
- -- | The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1as Boggs
Facts About Mahershala Ali
What’s in a Name? Mahershala Ali was born Mahershalalhashbaz Gilmore (taken from the name of Biblical prophet Isaiah’s second child) but has also taken the names Hershal Gilmore and then, when he converted to Islam in the year 2000, Mahershala Karim-Ali.
First: Ali’s Oscar win for Best Supporting Actor was the first for an actor of the Islamic faith.
Rapper: Mahershala Ali’s non-movie performing talents are in rapping, for which he has collaborated with hip-hop artists Keith Murray, Planet Asia, and Talib Kweli. He has recorded two albums in 2006 and 2007.
