Of all the biopics that have come down the pipeline over the years, few have nailed their casting as well as All Eyez on Me [1]. The drama follows the sprawling life and death of hip-hop superstar, actor, poet, and activist Tupac Shakur [2], with Hollywood newcomer Demetrius Shipp Jr. stepping into the gone-too-soon icon [3]'s shoes. Shipp Jr. embodies Shakur perfectly, a performance which is helped in a large part by the insane physical resemblance between the two (Lifetime, take note [4]). So, who is Demetrius Shipp Jr. [5]?
All Eyez On Me is the 28-year-old actor's first role, and he recently revealed to People [6] that he "never aspired to act." Fortunately he feels a strong connection to the message Shakur spread before his untimely death in 1996. "He was real, he had a message, and he spoke for the people — impoverished people of all classes," Shipp Jr. praised Shakur [7] in Entertainment Weekly. "He was definitely against people of a higher class. He questioned what was going on, and he used his platform to be a voice of change."
To prepare for the role, Shipp Jr. — who previously worked at Target and installed satellites for Dish Network — "researched and watched Tupac" all day. "If I was about to eat, I would turn on Tupac. When I was going to sleep, I would turn on Tupac and watch that until I fell asleep," he said. "Throughout the night, it would just be playing so that if I woke up in the morning, the first thing I would do was watch Tupac." He has another movie, #unlock'd, due out sometime soon, but in the meantime let's obsess over the uncanny resemblance between him and Shakur.
