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To even veteran Hollywood observers, Snipes's behavior is mystifying. How did the Bronx-raised black actor get mixed up in a movement that preaches anti-government paranoia and outright racism? Snipes's representatives declined repeated requests for comment, and several of his high-profile friends (including Rosie Perez, John Leguizamo, and Spike Lee) also refused to speak about the matter. But Snipes's unusual life story—and a grandiose self-image he has cultivated since childhood—may hold some clues to his plight. After rocketing from poverty to become one of the industry's top black leading men, Snipes has often found himself drawn to a variety of what his longtime friend screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper calls "Yes-people, whether they are in politics, religion, or New Age theory."

Putnam County sheriff Howard Sills was alarmed by Snipes' plans to open a massive training camp for his private paramilitary group, which he dubbed the Royal Guard of Amen-RaThe firstborn in a large family (he tersely told one reporter that he had "eight or so" siblings), Snipes seems to have always thought of his life in mythological terms—worlds apart from the South Bronx, where his mother pieced together a living as a teacher's assistant. "I think of myself as a young prince from a long line of royalty," Snipes boasted to People in 1991. "My sign is Leo. A Leo has to walk with pride. When he takes a step, he has to put his foot down. You walk into a room and you want people to know your presence, without you doing anything. I think I have kind of a natural magnetism." His talent was apparent early on, and his mother sent him to New York's well-regarded High School of Performing Arts, but Snipes was also drawn to the streets of the South Bronx. "Wes had one foot in the world of Juilliard and another on Southern Boulevard," says Cooper, who cowrote New Jack City.

In the early 1980s, Snipes won a Victor Borge scholarship to the mostly white State University of New York at Purchase, where he "felt like mold on white bread," as he told Ebony. After graduating in 1985, Snipes married his first wife, April, and converted to Islam. He then moved to Manhattan and began his acting career with a minor role in the 1986 Goldie Hawn vehicle Wildcats. His big break came in 1987, when he won a part in Michael Jackson's video for "Bad."

Directed by Martin Scorsese, "Bad" has a cartoon thuggishness that must have seemed ridiculous to someone with Snipes's background. But when Cooper spotted the actor on MTV, he was convinced he'd found the lead for New Jack City. "I said, 'That's Nino Brown,'" he recalls. "I was sure that he was actually from the streets." Though the suits at Warner Bros. were dubious, Cooper threatened to remove his name from the credits if Snipes wasn't cast. After beating out Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker, Snipes meticulously prepared for the role by researching the life of Washington, D.C., crack kingpin Rayful Edmund, and in a strange but inspired move, cut his hair into an angular, upward spike to resemble, as Snipes told Cooper, "the spine of a black panther."

Produced on a budget of $8 million, the film was a runaway success, earning $50 million at the box office. Sixteen years after its release, it remains so iconic in the hip-hop world that rappers from Def Jam's Juelz Santana to Diddy's Atlanta prot&eacture;gé Yung Joc reference it in their rhymes. "Wes was the paradigm," Cooper says. "Guys like Jay-Z model their swagger after him." Savvy about the perils of typecasting, Snipes wisely plunged into a slew of less predictable roles, playing an architect who falls for a white coworker in 1991's Jungle Fever, a savvy street hustler in 1992's White Men Can't Jump, and a drag queen in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar in 1995.

By then, he had become one of Hollywood's most bankable male stars, and a regular tabloid staple. As his face began popping up on magazine covers from Ebony to Newsweek, his asking price rose to $7 million per film, putting him neck and neck with Denzel Washington for the title of Hollywood's leading black actor. But all the adulation was starting to take a personal toll. After divorcing his wife April, who won custody of their young son, Jelani, and breaking with Islam—which he described as a temporary lifeline that had served its purpose—he seemed increasingly detached from reality. He began traveling with a menacing 15-person posse he later named the Royal Guard of Amen-Ra, after the Egyptian air deity and king of the gods. Some of his old friends were alienated by his increasingly high-handed behavior. Cooper remembers running into Snipes and his entourage one night at New York City's Coffee Shop on Union Square. "At that point, fame had really affected him," Cooper says. "His attitude was: 'I'm a star and I can't be touched.'"

The stunning success of the Blade movies—a sci-fi trilogy in which Snipes plays a half-human-half-vampire vampire slayer—further inflated the actor's ballooning ego. The first Blade sequel performed so well that UTA, which had signed Snipes in 2002, brokered a $13 million payout for his part in the film's third installment, Blade: Trinity. Though it was the largest fee Snipes had ever commanded, the actor seemed less than appreciative. According to UTA attorney Bryan Freedman, Snipes paid only half of the agreed-upon 10 percent commission for that film, and stiffed the agency of its cut outright on subsequent films, including Middle Man and The Shooter, which jointly earned the actor another $9 million. Snipes has never responded to the UTA suit, Freedman adds. Instead, in the spring of 2006, he left the agency and has yet to engage a replacement.

Somewhere along the line, Snipes seems to have become involved with the Nuwaubians, then headquartered in Putnam County, Georgia, though the exact nature of his relationship with this group is unclear. In 2000, a Nuwaubian representative told the Macon Telegraph that Snipes was an "avid" member, and the cult boasted of its relationship with Snipes on its website. Noting that the star "is a proud Nubian/Nuwaubian," the site added, rather portentously, "He is moving to Putnam County, and with him comes more money and power. All Nuwaubians will join his elite force for training. We will stop at nothing to drive the evil out of Putnam County."

At the time, the actor's representative denied that Snipes was "even remotely" affiliated with the sect, but his attempt in May 2000 to purchase 257 acres adjacent to the Nuwaubian compound for use as a training camp certainly raised eyebrows. Snipes sent his brother—whose name, oddly, is Wesley Rudolph Snipes—along with martial arts expert Steve Muhammad to Georgia to represent him in the deal. The pair approached police and zoning board officials and announced that they wanted to open a training camp for the Royal Guard of Amen-Ra. "They came to my office and said that they intended to turn the property into some kind of military training ground," remembers Putnam County sheriff Howard Sills, "but the last thing I needed was a damn school for mercenaries right next to the Nuwaubians."