Most recently cast as the sexy sheriff sweeping a cast-off divorcee Jill Scott off her feet in Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married, DC native Lamman Rucker can be seen in Perry's current film Meet The Browns. SOHH, caught up with Rucker to get the scoop on the grind it takes to make it from a soap star to the big screen.

I went to the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in DC and basically 9th through 12th grade is when I started focusing on acting. Prior to that I had done a couple things here or there, but high school is when I really started to concentrate on it. At least in high school you had to make the commitment to be there. I always knew that I could do whatever I wanted to do after that, it didn’t have to be that. I always had a really diverse education, my parents are very widely educated. I wasn’t putting myself in an alley, it was just one particular part of myself I was nourishing. I went to college (Carnegie Mellon and Duquesne) explored drama and musical theater for a couple years then went back on my athletic career but I never stopped performing.

Get Smart

Develop yourself intellectually, read books, get to know other people, travel the world. Feed your brain. A lot of things you’re going to go through and a lot of the things you need to know, situations you are going to be in, are going to are going to end up being a reflection of what you know. I find people in situations where they are totally clueless and don’t know what to do and it’s obvious that they never picked up a book. You’re going to tell me you never heard of such and such a country? You don’t look at maps? Get a subscription to National Geographic, take an occasional trip to the library, go to the museum so you can have a clue about other cultures that exist in the world. I know people where we’ll read scripts or be at table reads and people can’t read! They’re not illiterate but they can’t read. Part of it is comprehending, it's not just saying the words right. There are some child actors that read and they get what’s being said, the tone, the humor, the timing -- some people get it instinctively but some of it comes from being exposed, that’s what you get from reading. You learn what someone is trying to say. People need to work on developing themselves as human beings.

Audiences can catch Lamman Rucker in the film Meet The Browns, which hit theaters March 21st . He also has roles in Ball Don’t Lie, which is due out this spring as well as the DVD I’m Through With White Girls . Rucker is also performing in the current play "We Be I Me" as part of all-black male ensemble theater company the Black Gents of Hollywood. Visit www.myspace.com/blackgents or www.myspace.com/lammanrucker.