Andre Benjamin: hip-hop's hippest hep cat is saying "Hey Ya!" to the movies. Here he talks to an actor who knows all about that rap

It was William Shakespeare who once wrote that all the world is a stage, and we are all merely players. But Shakespeare, bless his Elizabethan soul, never met Andre Benjamin. As one half of the multiplatinum, Grammy-winning hip-hop duo OutKast, Benjamin has been a player all right, but there has been nothing mere about his game of taking modern music--and millions of people--to the most unexpected of places with the grandest of aplomb. Now, with starring roles in two new films, Benjamin himself is ready to take his existing fans--and with any luck, some new ones--into the relatively untested waters of the movie world, appearing with Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Garrett Hedlund, and Terrence Howard in John Singleton's recently released Four Brothers, about a group of adopted siblings who are out for revenge on the people responsible for the death of the woman who raised them, and alongside tough guys Jason Statham and Ray Liotta in Guy Ritchie's new gangster joint, Revolver.

MARK WAHLBERG: Andre!

ANDRE BENJAMIN: Bolly-boo. Where are you at?

MW: I'm on the golf course. I got my green "Hey Ya!" golf shirt on.

AB: Somebody was telling me they saw a picture of you in a full classic golfing outfit.

MW: Yeah, man. You should see the nice linen we got on right now, with an old-school skully cap to top it off. We like to golf. We love to golf. A lot of your attire is old classic golf gear, man--Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan.

AB: Oh, man, I know it.

MW: So, everything else is good?

AB: Yeah, everything is cool. I'm just reading scripts, looking for new things. I'm hoping to catch another project and start shooting something soon.

MW: I love the way you approach your work. You come in very focused, very prepared, and always willing to try new things. It's a cool thing for me to see, because I also came out of the music world, so I had to just focus on acting and nothing else, trying to grow as much as I possibly could. But on Four Brothers, seeing you come in there, as big a star as you are, and just do the work with no ego, no entourage, no bullshit, no nothing was just a beautiful thing.

AB: Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

MW: So, what else is going on? Are you and Big Boi still working on the new record?

AB: We're doing another album right now that's going to come out with My Life in Idlewild, our HBO movie. So I've been at home, working on songs for the soundtrack to that movie, which takes place in the '30s.

MW: Did Tyrese ever get you into the studio?

AB: Not yet. I told him I would love to do something with him, but it just has to be right.

MW: Yeah. He was working on some good stuff for his album, but there was no way I was getting into that studio.

AB: Now that would be a surprise. [both laugh] But if you were to do a song with him and people didn't know it was you and afterwards it blew up, I'm telling you, that'd be it.

MW: Yeah, I've done that here and there on soundtracks for some of my movies, but I never wanted people to associate my characters with my past. But I did sneak a couple of those in there, and people never knew it was me. There were times when I had to get a little bit of money because when I started out making movies, nobody wanted to pay me. So I had to sneak a couple dollars in.

AB: Ain't nothing changed.

MW: [both laugh] Yup. But things will for you after Four Brothers.

AB: I'm really looking forward to doing something new, to taking on new characters that I can really explore--people that are totally not Andre 3000. That's what I'm looking for right now.

MW: You'll find it. You just have to look, because there's not a lot of good shit out there, especially if you're hot, because they throw everything at you. But it ain't how many movies you do--it's how many of them are good.

AB: You're right.

MW: I have to get you into golf, man.

AB: I'm about to start taking tennis lessons.

MW: Really?

AB: Yeah. I took them when I was a kid, but I forgot everything when I got older. I want to get back into it. I like to move around. I like to sweat.

MW: So, what's going on with the Jimi Hendrix movie? I know that you've been trying to get that off the ground for a while.

AB: Honestly, I so want to do that Hendrix project, and Brian Grazer wants to do it too. Everybody wants to do it, but nobody can do anything until the family, who owns the rights to the songs, says, "Yeah, you can do it." For years it has been like that. I heard that Laurence Fishburne, Will Smith, and Eddie Murphy tried to make a Jimi Hendrix movie. So I'm just praying that one day the family will say, "Well, maybe this guy can do it."

MW: You know what? Nobody has more of the qualities you'd need to play Hendrix than you do. I think Four Brothers and the other stuff you've got coming up could really put you in a position to make that happen.

AB: I hope so, man. I'm just hoping to turn some heads so people say, "Well, maybe he can do it." I know that the people in the background want me to do it, but it's all about selling that to the family. I've reached out to them. I've sent personal letters to his sister, who owns the rights, but she probably gets 100 calls a day from people wanting to do a Jimi Hendrix project, so she's probably like, "Whatever."