Claim: Laurence Fishburne acted in a movie.

Othello is a 1995 film based on William Shakespeare 's tragedy of the same name . It was directed by Oliver Parker and stars Laurence Fishburne as Othello , Irène Jacob as Desdemona , and Kenneth Branagh as Iago . This is the first cinematic reproduction of the play released by a major studio that casts an African American actor to play the role of Othello , although low-budget independent films of the play starring Ted Lange and Yaphet Kotto predated it .