Antoine Fuqua (born May 30, 1965) is an American filmmaker, known for his work in the action and thriller genres. He was originally known as a director of music videos, and made his film debut in 1998 with The Replacement Killers. His critical breakthrough was the award-winning 2001 crime thriller Training Day. His subsequent films include Tears of the Sun (2003), King Arthur (2004), Shooter (2007), Brooklyn's Finest (2009), Olympus Has Fallen (2013), The Equalizer (2014), Southpaw (2015), The Magnificent Seven (2016), The Equalizer 2 (2018), and Infinite (2021). He also directed the critically-acclaimed documentaries American Dream/American Knightmare (2018), What's My Name: Muhammad Ali (2019), and the 2022 Hulu documentary series Legacy: The True Story of the LA Lakers. Early life Fuqua was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Carlos and Mary Fuqua. He graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in 1983. Before turning to filmmaking and music videos, Fuqua studied electrical engineering, with the hope of going on to fly jets in the military. Fuqua pays tribute to screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto, a frequent collaborator of Akira Kurosawa's, saying his writing "affected a boy from Pittsburgh living in the ghetto." Fuqua explained how his experience of violence shaped his adolescence, and played a role in his eventual choice of career. Career Fuqua began his career directing music videos for popular artists such as Toni Braxton, Stevie Wonder, and Prince. He directed Michelle Pfeiffer in the video Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio which was used to promote Jerry Bruckheimer's successful film Dangerous Minds. From 1998 onwards, Fuqua began working primarily as a feature film director. In a tribute article for Time magazine, Fuqua expressed his early respect for Kurosawa as a filmmaker and how Kurosawa influenced his own perspective on filmmaking stating: "[screen writer Hashimoto's] ... working with Akira Kurosawa and Hideo Oguni, was so beautiful and poetic and powerful and heartbreaking. It was all about justice, it was all about sacrifice, and it made me want to be one of those guys". His first feature films were the John Woo-produced action film The Replacement Killers (1998), starring Chow Yun Fat and the action comedy Bait (2000) starring Jamie Foxx. He then directed the crime thriller Training Day (2001), for which star Denzel Washington won an Academy Award for Best Actor. His next films were the action war drama Tears of the Sun (2003), the Arthurian legend film King Arthur (2004),