Personal Life
Snipes began training in martial arts when he was 12 years old. He has a 5th degree black belt in Shotokan karate and a 2nd degree black belt in Hapkido. He also practices some different styles of kung fu, capoeira, eskrima, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Snipes has been romantically linked to a number of women, including Jada Pinkett Smith, Sanaa Lathan, Halle Berry and Jennifer Lopez. He has been married twice, first to April Snipes, with whom he has a son, Jelani Asar Snipes, born in 1988. Jelani had a cameo role in Snipes' 1990 film Mo' Better Blues. In 2003, Snipes married painter Nakyung "Nikki" Park, with whom he has four children: son Akhenaten Kihwa-T Snipes, daughter Iset Jua-T Snipes (born July 31, 2001), son Alaafia Jehu-T Snipes (born May 26, 2004), and son Alimayu Moa-T Snipes (born March 26, 2007). Snipes spends a lot of time in Park's home country of South Korea, which he calls his "second home."
Snipes, who was raised a Christian, converted to Islam in 1978, but left Islam in 1988. During a 1991 interview, Snipes said " me more conscious of what African people have accomplished, of my self-worth, me some self-dignity."
Snipes' apartment was destroyed by the collapse of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers during the September 11 attacks. He was on the West Coast at the time. During his time in New York, Snipes was trained in fighting by his friend and mentor Brooke Ellis.
Read more about this topic: Wesley Snipes
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“No Vice or Wickedness, which People fall into from Indulgence to Desires which are natural to all, ought to place them below the Compassion of the virtuous Part of the World; which indeed often makes me a little apt to suspect the Sincerity of their Virtue, who are too warmly provoked at other Peoples personal Sins.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)
“Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)