Kevin Hooks (born September 19, 1958) is an American actor, and a television and film director; he is notable for his roles in Aaron Loves Angela and Sounder, but may be best known as Morris Thorpe from TV's The White Shadow.
Hooks appeared in the hit 1972 movie Sounder as the pre-teen elder son of Paul Winfield's and Cicely Tyson's characters, providing the point of view of the film.
Set in contemporary Harlem at New York's grittiest and most depressing ebb, that film was regarded as a "blaxploitation" version of Romeo and Juliet, using African American and Puerto Rican ethnicity in lieu of medieval families.
Jose Feliciano in a bit part and a little comic relief lighten the grimness,[editorializing] as the young lovers encounter nothing but intolerance, and the secret location where they meet becomes the site of a dangerous drug deal.
He directed Wesley Snipes in Passenger 57, Cynthia Rothrock and Stacy Keach in Irresistible Force, Laurence Fishburne and Stephen Baldwin in Fled, and also Patrick Swayze in Black Dog.