His upward spiral

When Terrence Howard heard he’d been compared to a young Brando for his ambitious Memphis pimp-turned-rapper in “Hustle & Flow,” he was understandably excited. But he also cherishes a more intimate plaudit he got 10 years ago for playing the flashy, violent Cowboy in one of his first movies, “Dead Presidents.”

“Laurence Fishburne came up to me,” Howard recalled over lunch recently at the Regent Beverly Wilshire, setting his fork down to relish the retelling. “He didn’t say hello, goodbye. He stuck his hand out and said, ‘I knew him.’ That’s been my goal, to make sure everyone I play has been someone [about whom] somebody can say, ‘He lives right over there. I can take you to his house.’ ”

It’s been 12 years for this Cleveland native toiling on the fringes of film and television, enduring five separate moves to L.A. (he now resides in Philadelphia) to build a roster of failed television shows, bit parts and fiery supporting turns. Now, with his star-making performance in the 16mm indie -- along with some raves for his psyche-wounded TV director in “Crash” -- his time may have come.

“Hustle” writer-director Craig Brewer recalled the audience reaction when the film first screened at the Sundance Film Festival: “They just ate him up. “Like, ‘Whatever that guy is slinging, I’m hungry for it.’ He owns the screen.”

Securing Howard to play “Hustle’s” brooding rogue, however, was a task made difficult by not just financiers, who wanted a name rapper to play DJay, but the actor himself, who had tired of criminal parts. But Brewer and producer Stephanie Allain persisted, and once Howard grasped DJay’s desire to better himself, to show his abilities, he recalls, “Then it became alive to me.” He began interviewing pimps, testing their sensitivities.

“I was asking pointedly, ‘What if it was your sister?’ Half of them were like, ‘As long as she’s bringing me the money, it don’t matter.’ But their eyes -- their eyes are saying something different: ‘I know this suit don’t fit, but I’m gonna act like it looks good.’ ”

Howard’s soulful, vulnerable eyes are impossible to ignore, as are his discursive tangents on anything from his desire to be a better husband (he wooed back his ex-wife, with whom he has three children, and remarried her this year) to the healing qualities of music, sometimes breaking into a closed-eyes croon -- Janis Ian or Reba McEntire, of all people -- to illustrate a point.

Howard, who also writes songs and plays guitar, initially wanted DJay to sing Terrence Howard originals -- an idea Brewer quickly nixed -- or at least rap “intelligent and profound” things. But Brewer was adamant DJay’s crude, droning crunk style never betray anything above a ninth-grade education.

Says Howard of the film’s set-piece raps, “I hated every word I had to say, and that was a challenge, to love and believe and stand behind the words. I love the storytelling [in rap], but I don’t think music should ever be violent or ugly. Maybe I’m a tree hugger or something, and that’s my problem.”

Is being a veteran at 36 an issue perhaps? “I’m young in the sense of my resilience and spirit,” says Howard. “I’ll ride my bike 100 miles an hour down the pavement thinking that if I fall I’m not going to break my bones. But I’m old in the fact that it takes me a little longer to recover.”

This is Howard’s second go-round with the drumbeat of incipient stardom. It first echoed after “The Best Man,” the 1999 buppie romantic comedy slyly dominated by Howard’s purring womanizer, Quentin.

Writer-director Malcolm Lee had cast Howard over the objections of a studio executive who wanted a comedian in the part. Howard felt he ultimately had to put his career on the line to play Quentin as a complicated lothario philosophizer instead of merely the comic relief. “It was, ... ‘Pick up your pace, your character is the funny person, you’re [being] difficult,’ and I was like ‘Well, fire me then.’ It was the first time I was standing up for the integrity of my character.”

Howard got the laughs and the acclaim. But when the movies got bigger the parts didn’t necessarily get better: a villain (“Big Momma’s House”), a cop partner (“Angel Eyes”), shooting in Prague (on “Hart’s War”) and nakedly coveting the status of star Bruce Willis, “who was making more in his per diem for two weeks than I was in the whole five months of working on the movie.”

That envy isn’t far from the boy in Cleveland who wanted to be the people he saw on TV and in movies.

“I walked around like Superman for about two months. I saw ‘Cool Hand Luke’ and absorbed him for a year,” he said. “I was always creating something.” Howard inherited a love of performance from his parents: a suave insurance salesman father -- “He looked like Smokey [Robinson], with piercing eyes, red skin, wavy hair, and people responded to him” -- and an aspiring singer-actress mom. His grandmother was New York stage actress Minnie Gentry, and every summer he’d hang out in her dressing room, picking up advice. “She was the mentor of my life, taught me about being honest, that you’re only uncomfortable and nervous when you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Making his move

“Best MAN” director Lee calls Howard “supremely talented” but predicts he will thrive as a star only if the material has depth and risk. “If he feels he can dance with somebody, box with somebody in a scene, it gets him excited and he wants to keep going and going. He’s not doing this as a hobby.”

Now that he’s “in the fight” for leading-man status, Howard said his agent and manager want him to leave supporting parts behind. The last ones will trickle out over the next year: another cop, in John Singleton’s “Four Brothers”; another bad guy, in “My Life in Idlewild”; and another sidekick, as 50 Cent’s manager in Jim Sheridan’s “Get Rich Or Die Tryin.’ ”

Now, director Spike Lee wants him to play the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis. As Howard parses the Hollywood opportunity in front of him, he feels the role already -- and an obligation to the black actors who will someday follow in his footsteps. “I’m Joe Louis right now, in comparison to [controversial turn-of-the-century black boxer] Jack Johnson. I’m not going to look at the white girls, and I will not smile at my opponent when he’s down. I have to be more on guard for the next Marlon Brando that might happen to be black.”

Allain enthuses that there hasn’t been an “heir apparent” to Denzel Washington until now. “That’s what Terrence is, the gorgeous guy who’s also a fantastic actor.” But she also thinks that his outsider status will stand him in good stead. “I think that’s what gives him his edge.”

Howard’s career ideal is Johnny Depp. “I want to gain the respect of the world and the industry before gaining the money. Can I do the magic Johnny does? I believe I’ve got my own.”

It’s hard not to believe Howard is energized by his internal struggles. He likes digging his heels in but also wants to be accommodating. Yet for all that “Hustle & Flow” may open up to him, he wonders if being himself -- which essentially means being whoever he wants to be at any given moment: smooth-talker, provocateur, do-gooder -- has become a liability.

For example, earlier in the day he was chastised at a rehearsal for the MTV Movie Awards for the high crime of ad-libbing his introduction of Mariah Carey’s singing performance (the script for the intro had been precisely contracted). For an actor used to going off script, it was a rude awakening. “I just wanted to be silly,” says Howard, shaking his head at the memory. “Don’t invite me to a party and tell me what dance I can do.”

As he launched into a further gripe about being told what to wear for the broadcast, his publicist, sitting at the next table over, materialized with a cellphone. “Terrence, you have a call, and you need to take it outside, real quick.”

When Howard returned a few minutes later, he spilled the beans, unprompted. There was no call, just a mini-lecture on talking to the media. He let out a slightly exasperated laugh. “I got counseled. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. It’s hard, when you’ve been your own person.”

A few weeks later Howard is on the phone, talking about a lesson in media training he’s about to take “for the talk shows, so I will be palatable for them.”

He sounds tired, a little resigned, adding, “Years ago, I would have told them, ‘You can go stick a pin in it,’ but those are things that have kept me from being able to continue in the direction I needed to go in. I’m not really that interested in being a talk-show guest, but to the industry it is important. If it makes the powers that be happier, I’ll play the game.”