Williams worked with Spike Lee in Mo' Better Blues and co-starred with Bill

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Williams worked with Spike Lee in Mo' Better Blues and co-starred with Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton in 1995's One False Move, the widely acclaimed debut of the black director Carl Franklin. Despite a noteworthy performance, Williams was never seen in such exalted company again; she last appeared in last year's eminently forgettable black street saga, Caught Up.Beals's tale is truly that of the tragic mulatto, the name given to a turn-of-the-century genre of pulp fiction that sensationalised the story of well-born white Southern women who discovered they had black ancestry. This underscores the black- expendability syndrome, and makes continuity for black leading actors all but impossible.Consider the careers of two once-promising actresses, Cynda Williams and Jennifer Beals (black actresses have it tougher than the men, probably because black men are rarely, if ever, cast as romantic leads and hence never need leading ladies cast opposite them). Though the stories were often soft-headed, the films at least granted celluloid space to actors who deserved much more of it - actors such as Lynn Whitfield, Courtney Vance, Debbi Morgan and Angela Bassett.But with all black actors, it is not so much about building an individual career as it is about waiting for a trend to take hold or an appropriate part to become available in a niche movie.

Samuel Jackson's career-defining moment came in Pulp Fiction as a garrulous, scripture-quoting hit-man with a short fuse and a penchant for using the word "nigger" - the star has become synonymous with, and somewhat infamous for, the use of the word.In the last few years there has been a backlash to the ghettoisation of black film, in the form of respectable middle-class stories that assiduously avoid street life and all things rap: Waiting to Exhale, Love Jones, The Preacher's Wife, Eve's Bayou. The spectre of the original constitutional definition of a black man's worth - three-fifths of a white man - is raised uncomfortably on screen today. Blacks, regardless of their bankability or prominence in Hollywood, still convey less humanity than whites.Still, Smith is applauded by many black moviegoers for what he is not - a ghetto-bred, drug-dealing, prison-prowling human pathogen that has dominated black films since the dawn of the 1990s and the advent of Menace II Society and New Jack City as the new standard-bearers of not merely black film but black authenticity. In a way, however, he's become victimised by the parameters of his own success: the artistic leap he made in John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation, his first screen role, in which he played a glib, gay hustler and for which he received critical raves, was never repeated or built upon.A condition of Smith's phenomenal leading-man success, apparently, was that he be affable, quick-witted, handsome and well-dressed - not that much different from Smith's white counterpart Tom Cruise, except that Cruise has always also taken on challenging and emotionally complex roles that measurably broaden his hunk appeal.

Smith is not only not taking on such roles; he seems to be moving in the opposite direction with quasi- kiddie films such as Men in Black and Independence Day (though we can hold out some hope - he's also preparing to play Muhammad Ali in a forthcoming biopic). Soundtracks, a crucial element of black films since the early 1970s, became all-important - almost more important than the films themselves; soundtracks featuring up and coming hip-hop and R & B artists - urban artists - are often released to greater success than the movies they are allegedly promoting.It's no coincidence that the groundbreaking Will Smith started out as a rapper and created himself a funny, streetwise persona that served him first on television in Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and later in the movies. Rap-generation comics such as Chris Rock and Chris Tucker have capitalised on this trend and found movie stardom; so have rappers such as Ice Cube, Queen Latifah, Ice-T, and the late Tupac Shakur.Mainstream black actors have not fared nearly as well, not just because black drama is always scarce but because the hip-hop sensibility began to define black film and further limit the possibilities of what was financially feasible. Black actors still largely exist to further a narrow image and fulfil narrow expectations not of their making, and as such they are always expendable.Some of the increased black screen visibility is due to the rise of hip- hop, and the emergence of a new black audience called the urban or inner- city market.