By the time Hollywood came calling, Laurence Tureaud had already become Mr. T. He had the name, the muscles, and the mohawk that would become his calling card. And of course, he had enough gold around his neck to concern a chiropractor. During his years working Chicago nightclubs and protecting celebrities, he slowly built the persona Sylvester Stallone would eventually help turn into a household name.
His journey from a South Side Chicago housing project to Rocky III and The A-Team is the subject of the new Netflix documentary Untold Mr. T: I Pity the Fool.
Here’s everything to know about the man behind the moniker—and how Laurence Tureaud became Mr. T.
Why Did Laurence Tureaud Start Calling Himself Mr. T?
Born Laurence Tureaud on May 21, 1952, in Chicago, Mr. T was the second-youngest of 12 children. His father, Nathaniel Tureaud, was a minister who left the family when Laurence was just 5. He and his siblings were raised by their mother, Willa Lee Tureaud, in a three-room apartment in the Robert Taylor Homes, a public housing complex on Chicago’s South Side.
“We grew up poor financially, but we were rich spiritually,” Mr. T told The Guardian in 2009. “A lot of days I didn’t have three meals, I didn’t have toys at Christmas, but that didn’t distract from the love my mother showed me.”
His mother cleaned houses in the suburbs and became the person he most wanted to impress. Even after he became famous for terrifying Rocky Balboa, he happily described himself as “a big, overgrown, tough, butt-kicking mama’s boy.”
Tureaud attended Dunbar Vocational High School, where he played halfback and won two city wrestling championships. Football earned him a scholarship to Prairie View A&M University in Texas.
But it was long before he became a sought-after bouncer and actor—and even before college—he changed his name. In 1970, when he turned 18, he legally became Mr. T to demand respect after watching white men call his father, a minister, and his brother, a Marine who’d returned from Vietnam, “boy.”
“I self-ordained myself Mr. T., so the first word out of everybody’s mouth would be ‘Mr.,’” he told the Chicago Sun-Times in August.
Officially Mr. T, he only attended college for a year before being expelled. After returning to Chicago, he taught gym through a government youth program.
He then enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1975 and served in the Military Police Corps. During his time at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, he demonstrated his brawn was more than just for show. When a platoon sergeant ordered him to chop down trees, he neglected to mention how many. Tureaud cut down more than 70 before a superior officer finally stopped him.
How Did Mr. T Become a Celebrity Bodyguard?
After he left the Army, Mr. T found work as a nightclub doorman and bouncer in Chicago. During this time, his look started to evolve. He started wearing gold chains while working the door at the discotheque Dingbats. Necklaces sometimes came loose during fights, but customers who’d been thrown out couldn’t go back inside to look for them. So Tureaud began wearing the lost pieces, like a walking, muscle-bound lost-and-found department. It soon became an unmistakable part of his personal trademark.
The jewelry eventually took on a deeper meaning. Mr. T said his gold chains transformed the iron chains once forced upon his enslaved ancestors. “I turned those steel chains to gold to symbolize the fact I’m still a slave, only my price tag is higher,” he recalled to US Weekly in August. His infamous mohawk was inspired by a National Geographic photograph of a Mandinka warrior from West Africa.
Thanks to his impressive size and military background, he soon was hired as a bodyguard in Los Angeles, beginning a bodyguard career that lasted nearly a decade.
Mr. T guarded some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment, from heavyweight champions Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, and Leon Spinks to musicians and actors Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, and Steve McQueen.
How Did Mr. T Become an Actor?
In 1980, Mr. T entered an NBC competition called “America’s Toughest Bouncer.” It aired as part of Games People Play, a primetime special devoted to unusual athletic contests. Competitors threw a 150-pound stuntman, smashed through a four-inch wooden door, and if they earned enough points for a place in the final event, they’d take part in a boxing match in a 16-foot ring.
Mr. T took the title, and returned for a rematch after the special became a series. He won again, then donated his prize money to Chicago’s Cosmopolitan Community Church.
His second victory caught Stallone’s attention and led to an audition for Rocky III. By the time Stallone brought him in to read for rival boxer Clubber Lang, real fighters—the original plan for the role—had already washed out. Frazier stumbled over his line readings and left Stallone needing stitches during a rehearsal session.
Heavyweight Earnie Shavers hit Stallone in the stomach hard enough to send him off to be sick. Mr. T, who had no acting experience, sized up the situation and pulled his punches with purpose. “If I hit him too hard, I might not get the part,” he later said. He was right, and he soon landed the role.
Where Did Mr. T’s Catchphrase Come From?
The origin of his most famous line as Clubber Lang remains murky. Before one bout on America’s Toughest Bouncer, Mr. T told host Bryant Gumbel he felt sorry for his opponent. Mr. T now recalls refusing to say Clubber hated Rocky and substituting, “I don’t hate Balboa. I pity the fool.” While Stallone received sole credit for the screenplay, the words sounded unmistakably like the man he’d hired.
Mr. T, who has since trademarked the phrase, told Conan O’Brien in a 2017 interview that the catchphrase’s origins are Biblical in nature. “When you pity somebody you showing them mercy,” he said. “I didn't start this pity stuff. It was in the Bible. You know you can find ‘pity’ so many times in the Bible and ‘fool’ so many times so I put them together.”
Rocky III opened in 1982. The following year, Mr. T became B.A. Baracus on The A-Team, turning him into an ‘80s icon. It wasn’t long before he briefly branched out into professional wrestling, making his WWE debut with Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania in 1985.
Hollywood may have given him the platform, but it didn’t create Mr. T. He had finished that job himself years earlier.
Where Is Mr. T Now?
Now 74, Mr. T has retired from acting and largely stepped away from the spotlight. A cancer survivor, the former actor and wrestler has been in remission from T-cell Lymphoma since 2001. After doing some voiceover work, he competed on Dancing with the Stars in 2017, finishing in 10th place.
More recently, Mr. T appeared in the latest installment of Netflix’s Untold series, though he is unhappy with how the documentary turned out. “The documentary pissed me off, because they didn’t cover a lot of stuff,” Mr. T told The Guardian in September. “When I saw it I was like: ‘What the heck?’ It’s garbage. You build me up, then you try to punk me out.”
He added, “That’s what we call, in the Black community, a white man wanting to change the story and control the narrative. If you don’t know me, you’re gonna think I’m some monster.”
How to Watch Untold Mr. T: I Pity the Fool
Directed by Scott Weintrob, Untold Mr. T: I Pity the Fool explores Mr. T’s difficult upbringing and meteoric rise to fame, taking a look at the massive impact he had on 1980’s pop culture. The new documentary is now streaming on Netflix.
