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Read the press release here.

Rhymefest Begins His Film Acting Career Alongside Alec Baldwin

By Sam Cholke | January 23, 2017 5:45pm

CHICAGO — Che “Rhymefest” Smith started his first major acting gig Monday with an Academy Award already in his pocket.

Smith, who won an Oscar in 2015 for best original song in “Glory,” is acting for the first time now in the ensemble drama “The Public” alongside Alec Baldwin, Taylor Schilling and Jena Malone.

Smith is playing “Big George,” a homeless man who leads a sit-in that turns the Cincinnati Public Library into a temporary homeless shelter during a brutal cold-snap, according to Film Cincinnati, a nonprofit that promotes filmmaking in the city.

“I grew my hair out, this is as much as I could grow my hair out in two months,” Smith said on Instagram Monday.

He said he’s been working with an acting coach to prepare and promised to send updates from the set.

Emilio Estevez wrote the screenplay and is directing the film.

He said in a statement that the movie asks the question, “Who will care for those individuals who are unable to care for themselves?”

Baldwin will play a crisis negotiator trying to de-escalate the standoff at the library, while Estevez and Malone play librarians trapped inside. Schilling plays a woman trying to overcome a media circus to expose what is at the heart of the sit-in.

The film does not yet have an announced release date. 

 

I still live on the South Side of Chicago and love it when my Neighbors see me picked up in Style #thepublic

A photo posted by Rhymefest (@rhymefest) on