The Bahamas have played host to some very famous faces when it comes to fishing. Throughout the years, novelists, actors, and diarists have all turned their hand to catching grouper, marlin, and tuna in The Bahamas; fishing trips to this tropical paradise might put you next to a famous face or two. Perhaps it’s the reputation of The Bahamas for combining relaxation, contemplation, and the excitement of the challenges present in activities such as deep-sea fishing and bonefishing that makes it so appealing. It doesn’t get more real than pitting yourself against mackerel or mahimahi, and you don’t need to live the life of a movie star to enjoy it – though you may feel like a celebrity after returning to shore!

Laurence Fishburne

Famous for his role as Morpheus in ‘The Matrix’ trilogy of films (where he played a spiritual guru, computer hacker, and terrorist leader all rolled into one character), and as Ike Turner (one of the founders of rock and roll) in biopic ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’, Laurence Fishburne is an accomplished actor, and the first African-American to portray Othello in a film by a major studio. When not in The Bahamas fishing for grouper, he plays Doctor Raymond Langston on long-running American crime drama CSI, taking the leading character role after William Petersen’s departure.

John Grisham

A popular American author, John Grisham is renowned for his intricate legal thrillers, and is one of only two authors to sell two million copies of one of his book
s on a first printing. Though his first novel was ‘A Time To Kill’, published in 1984, he only found success later on. After writing his first best seller ‘The Firm’ in 1991 (which sold more than seven million copies), it was adapted as a feature film. Seven more of his novels were later to be adapted into film, including ‘The Chamber’, ‘The Client’, ‘A Painted House’, ‘The Pelican Brief’, ‘The Rainmaker’, ‘Runaway Jury’, and ‘A Time To Kill’. It remains to be seen whether Bahamas fishing will feature in his next best-seller.

Michael Keaton

Versatile actor Michael Keaton is well known for his early comedic roles in films such as ‘Johnny Dangerously’, ‘Gung Ho’, and ‘Mr. Mom’. However, he found widespread acclaim with cult comedy ‘Beetlejuice’, where he played the titular role of the ghostly “bio-exorcist” Beetlejuice, and found himself on the Hollywood A-List as a result. Although apparently enjoying the sun while fishing, Bahamas residents may have recognized him as playing a rather darker character – in 1989, Michael Keaton took on the lead role of ‘Batman’, a dramatic turn that led to the film becoming one of the most successful of the year.

Ernest Hemingway

The original celebrity who popularized Bahamas fishing, famous diarist and writer Ernest Hemingway lived and fished around Bimini for several seasons in the 1930’s, from 1935 to 1937 while working on his novel ‘To Have and Have Not’. As the anecdotes have it, a 500 pound Atlantic Blue Marlin he caught near Bimini inspired him to write ‘The Old Man and The Sea’, and ‘Islands in the Stream’.