Jazz is like putting on your favorite hat, a crop top, and a tie,” says the actor Kelvin Harrison Jr. of the art form that shaped much of his upbringing in the West Bank of New Orleans. The son of jazz musicians, he’s always improvising like that, striving to find the right rhythm in his music and, now, in Hollywood. And memories of life back then—visiting his grandmother, teasing his younger twin sisters, eating red beans and rice—form the liner notes of that nascent but thriving career. Harrison stumbled into acting, he says, while searching for a new way to express himself, and he’s moving closer, (for which he won a Screen Actors Guild Award for outstanding cast), , , and , as well as the forthcoming Elvis Presley and Jean-Michel Basquiat biopics. As Harrison prepared to present at the BAFTA Film Awards in London this past spring, he riffed on how he handles ad-libbing, portraying legends, and keeping it simple.
