Bird Call

In the film “Bird,” directed by Clint Eastwood, jazz legend Charlie (Bird) Parker says that “if we could hear every sound in the world, we’d go crazy.” Forest Whitaker--whose portrayal of the “Yardbird” earned him the best actor award at the recent Cannes Film Festival--is convinced that Parker’s ability to hear it all was behind both his success and his undoing.

“The same thing that created the musical genius also created the fall,” says the 26-year-old Whitaker.

Whitaker should know. After securing the starring role in “Bird,” he spent months researching the drug-and-alcohol-plagued life of Parker, who died in 1955 at age 34. He talked to Parker’s friends, read books and articles about his life, watched his taped interviews.

And, of course, he listened to Parker’s music. “His musical playing was an extension of his soul,” says Whitaker. Whitaker grew up in a world of instrument and song. Raised in Carson and South Central L.A., he began playing the baritone horn in junior high school and sang in the high school chorus. Later, he studied music and drama at USC on scholarship.

Whitaker seriously considered a career in opera, but his success in film--Pvt. Garlick in “Good Morning, Vietnam,” Big Harold in “Platoon” and Amos in “The Color of Money”--cut short that ambition. His award-winning performance in “Bird,” which opens here Sept. 30, is his biggest part to date.

It was also his most challenging. “I tend to do a lot of homework anyway,” says Whitaker. “But Parker was a very complicated person. . . . He didn’t share his fears and hopes and pains. He was not able to communicate.”

Whitaker’s next role is on stage, starring in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Hairy Ape,” opening at the Tiffany Theatre here in September.