Cavaliers To Honor Clevelands Own African-American Entertainers
Terrence Howard was raised in Cleveland and is an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominated actor and a Screen Actors Guild Award and a multiple NAACP Image Award winner. Howard won a Screen Actors Guild award for his role in Crash, which won an Oscar at the 2006 Academy Awards for Best Picture. He made his big film break in 1995's Mr. Holland's Opus and has starred in films including Ray, The Best Man, The Brave One, Iron Man and Fighting. His song performance in “Hustle & Flow” received a Critics Choice Award and became the first rap song ever to receive an Academy Award. Also a self taught musician, Howard plays both the piano and the guitar. He released an album on the Columbia Records label in 2008, entitled “Shine Through It,” and also displayed his musical talents in Best Man and opposite Jamie Foxx in Ray.
Vanessa Bell Calloway is a Cleveland native and a multi-talented actress who’s worked on stage, screen, and television. Her work has garnered her seven NAACP Image Award nominations and she currently has a recurring role on TNT’s Hawthorne RN starring Jada Pinkett Smith, and will be seen guest starring on Tyler Perry’s House Of Payne. Recently Calloway guest starred on CBS’s Cold Case and will star opposite Charles S. Dutton in an independent feature entitled The Effect due to be released in 2010. She has appeared in such films as Lakeview Terrace, Biker Boyz, What's Love Got To Do With It, Coming to America and Crimson Tide and was the lead female voice in the animated feature Bebe's Kids. Calloway, an accomplished dancer, was cast in the original Broadway production of Dreamgirls.
Nathaniel Ayers is a Cleveland native and American musician. Ayers played the double bass and attended the New York’s Juilliard School on a scholarship as a bassist, while being one of the few African-American students at that time. In his third year, he suffered a mental breakdown and was institutionalized with the condition of schizophrenia. After coming back to Cleveland for treatment, he moved to Los Angeles where he ended up living on the streets of Los Angeles playing half-broken instruments (such as the violin and cello) on street corners. His story became highly popular in numerous newspaper columns, a book, and a 2009 film adaptation, “The Soloist,” which starred Robert Downey Jr. as a journalist, who tries to help Mr. Ayers, played by Jamie Foxx, get back on his feet.
