One Night In Miami: What Happened To Jim Brown After The Movie Ended

In One Night in Miami, Jim Brown considers becoming an actor, and that’s exactly what he did, to a fair amount of success, after the events in the film. The movie is a fictionalized account of a meeting between Civil Rights era legends Brown (Aldis Hodge), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali (Eli Goree), and Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.). In the film, Brown is perhaps the most soft-spoken and sidelined of the four characters, but he ended up having the longest life and most prolific career. In fact, he is the only one of the four men who is still alive today, at the age of 85.

One Night in Miami is based on the play by Kemp Powers, who earned an Oscar nomination for adapting the screenplay. It’s actor Regina King’s directorial debut and was nominated for three Academy Awards total. The film is set on the night that Ali won the heavyweight boxing world championship, February 25, 1964. What begins as a joyful occasion ends up unleashing ideological and personal conflicts, but ultimately unites the four men in their fight to liberate Black people in America. Over the course of one night in a hotel in Miami, each character understands themselves and their role in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in a more complex way.

One Night in Miami is not a true story, though it is based on real events, including an actual meeting between the four icons. Brown was indeed the top NFL running back of his day, if not of all time, and played for the Cleveland Browns from 1957 to 1965. He was born on St. Simons Island, Georgia, and the segregated and racist environment he came from is depicted in his first scene in the film. He then went to high school in New York state before becoming a top college football player at Syracuse and being drafted into the NFL straight out of college. In 1964, when the film takes place, Brown had just begun to transition into acting in Hollywood, which may at first have surprised many people. At the end of One Night in Miami, Brown retires early from football to devote himself fully to acting. What the film doesn’t mention is that he went on to feature in over 50 films, many in leading roles.

Brown’s acting career began with a small part in the western Rio Conchos, which was released in October of 1964. Despite this film not being well-received, Brown was cast in a following one, The Dirty Dozen, which was hugely successful. MGM then signed him for a multi-film deal, and he soon began starring as the leading man in feature films, the first of which was The Split in 1968. Most of his films were in the western, war, and action genres, and he proved to be a vital component of the push for equal representation on screen.

Many of Brown’s films were box-office successes, and in 1969’s 100 Rifles he was in one of the first interracial love scenes on screen with actress Raquel Welch. Brown’s long career extended well past the events of One Night in Miami and into the 21st century. He is still alive today and continues receiving accolades (most recently being named the greatest college football player of all time in 2020) for his important legacy.