Michael Jai White (born November 10, 1967) is an American actor, director and martial artist. He was the first African American to portray a major comic book superhero in a major motion picture, starring as Al Simmons, the protagonist in the 1997 film Spawn. White appeared as Marcus Williams in the Tyler Perry films Why Did I Get Married? and Why Did I Get Married Too?, and starred as the character on the TBS/OWN comedy-drama television series Tyler Perry’s For Better or Worse. White portrayed Jax Briggs in Mortal Kombat: Legacy and the Cyborg Seth in Universal Soldier: The Return. He portrayed boxer Mike Tyson in the 1995 HBO television movie Tyson.
He also played the title role in the blaxploitation parody film Black Dynamite, as well as the animated series of the same name.
White is a martial artist in nine different styles: Shōtōkan, Goju-Ryu (for which he studied under Master Eddie Morales where he learned to sharpen his Goju karate technique), Taekwondo, with a specific focus in Kyokushin Karate (although his style incorporates aspects of many different martial arts forms).
White started training in the martial arts at the age of four in Jiujitsu. He next took up Shōtōkan and moved on to other styles later.
White is a former special education teacher and taught students with behavioral problems for three years. He cites his history in education as the reason why, despite his personal love for the music genre on “a lot of levels”, he cannot “in good [conscience]”
have a positive opinion on hip hop or “excuse some of [its] pervasive and destructive elements”, mainly due to his experience with youngsters who had difficulty seeing the difference between it and real life.