In No 'Rush' for Six Years, Tucker Returns to Acting

Washington Post - United States - It's been six years since his last movie. Six years since he tossed on a police uniform, stood next to Jackie Chan and kick-boxed a few bad guys.

Six years that Chris Tucker has spent, he says, "enjoying my celebrity."

Which sounds like an awfully indulgent hiatus. And sure enough, when he was arrested two years ago for reckless driving in Georgia, he was behind the wheel of a shiny new Bentley Continental.

But that incident is an anomaly for the 34-year-old comedian. He says he was late for church the day he was pulled over. And when he talks about "enjoying his celebrity," he is talking about the liberty to take years off, lend his name and voice to the underrepresented, to worry about problems bigger than his own.

So he makes no apologies for the delay between "Rush Hour 2" and "Rush Hour 3."

"It took a while because I was doing things around the world that were really important to me," he said via phone from Atlanta, his hometown. "I wasn't controlled by making movies and getting as much money as I could. I was just living a little bit . . . going to villages with no clean water, going to Ethiopia with Bono."