Desson Howe, for the Washington Post, wrote, 'Shakur and Roth, who seem born for these roles, are allowed to take charge – and have fun doing it'. The New York Times editor Janet Maslin praised Shakur's performance: 'He played this part with an appealing mix of presence, confidence and humor'.

Thandie Newton as Barbara 'Cookie' Cook.

Tim Roth as Alexander 'Stretch' Rawland.

Tupac Shakur as Ezekiel 'Spoon' Whitmore.

He and Tim are so perfect together.' – Vondie Curtis-Hall Cast I can't see anybody else in the movie now apart from Tupac. But he wasn't the first choice… Larry Fishburne wanted to do it, but we couldn't afford him. But there was this one company that really wanted to do the film with Tupac and, once they okayed it, things got a little easier. It took about another six months to get Tupac because he'd just got out of jail and nobody wanted to touch him. He read it on the plane back and got on board straight away. Tim was doing Rob Roy in Scotland when I sent him the script. That's the way it usually goes in Hollywood. Then Tupac's record company came up with the money and PolyGram turned around and said, 'Hey, we always liked this movie' (laughs).

It didn't mean shit to me… It's like saying you can't do two romantic comedies. And people were expecting it to be a real depressing movie about a couple of dope fiends… Then PolyGram had just put Trainspotting out and were like, 'We can't do two movies about heroin.' I didn't know anything about Trainspotting. 'It wasn't that easy because it was about smack, which is a bit of a taboo subject here. I remembered that when it came to writing my first movie.' – Vondie Curtis-Hall Production So we ended up wandering around from place to place, no one giving us any help. We were doing a bit of everything and were both sixteen, living with our folks, so we couldn't give our address in case they got to know about what we were doing. Next day, we went to try and get into rehab. That was the way we thought we could play faster guitar, write better songs… One day my best friend, the bassist, and I were sitting around and decided that maybe we could actually play better if we weren't stoned all the time. 'It's largely autobiographical, with a lot of it coming from the time when I was a teenager in Detroit, playing guitar and singing in bands. He and Tim are so perfect together.' – Vondie Curtis-Hall

I remembered that when it came to writing my first movie.' – Vondie Curtis-Hall The film paid tribute to star Tupac Shakur, who was murdered four months prior to the film's release.

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