DENVER, COLO.—It's hard to believe that Ice Cube is just 42. It seems as though he has been around forever. Perhaps it feels that way because he has made an impact in almost every year since he became an adult. He was a hip-hop star at 19, a movie star at 22, and a film producer at 26. He has acted in dozens of movies, continues to make records, and tours for six weeks at a time.

In a Denver hotel room, where he has come to promote the film version of the iconic series 21 Jump Street, he says that he never really thought about how unusual his life was when he was starting out in show business.

“I guess I was too young and naive in terms of trying to do what I was doing, but there were opportunities and the synergy was right. I wrote the song “Boyz-n-the-Hood” that started [the hip-hop group] NWA, and suddenly I was doing a movie called Boyz n the Hood. To me, the planets had aligned and it was right for me to just keep going. When I was younger, I had always figured that I could do both films and music because Elvis had done it.”

However, Elvis didn't produce his movies or write and produce songs for himself and others. Cube says the secret to his success in two different forms of entertainment is that he has never taken it too seriously. “My work is my hobby, which is a beautiful thing,” he says. “I got into hip-hop as a hobby. It was a pastime for me, but while everyone else was thinking of something to do, some of us were jumping on turntables and mixing and break dancing and spray painting. I try not to micromanage everything, but I like for people to give me their best, because that is what I am giving to them.”

The most unique thing about Cube may not even be his success in music and movies, since others have made that leap. The uncommon thing is that he managed to move seamlessly from the threatening image of gangsta rap and dramas like Boyz n the Hood to hit comedies.

“I loved dramas and comedies, and I could find the sense of humour in damn near anything. I did Friday [and its two sequels] because I wanted to talk abut the angle of coming from a neighbourhood through my eyes, because when you live there you have to find the funny in everything.”

The same sense of playing with images drew him to 21 Jump Street, in which he plays a no-nonsense police captain in a light comedy. “I have done three movies with Neil Moritz, the producer, and he has always cast me perfectly. He said, ‘You add a weight to this movie that wasn't there before.' I am cool and honoured to be thought of that way, rather than being thought of as the heavy, but to me it was in my wheelhouse.”

Watch the trailer for 21 Jump Street.