Ice Cube entered cinema by playing Doughboy in director John Singleton's feature debut "Boyz n the Hood", a 1991 drama named after a 1987 rap song that Cube wrote. Cube also cowrote and starred in the 1995 comedy film "Friday"; "coarse and ribald", it premised a successful franchise and reshaped his persona into a friendly movie star. His directorial debut was the 1998 film "The" "Player's Club". By 2020, his acting roles included about 40 films, among them the 1999 war comedy "Three Kings", family comedies like the "Barbershop" series, and buddy cop comedies "21 Jump Street", "22 Jump Street", and "Ride Along". He was an executive producer of many of these films, as well as of the 2015 biopic "Straight Outta Compton".