Ice-T’s acting career started with appearances in the Breakin’ movies, but things took off with his feature role in the 1991 film New Jack City.

In a recent conversation with the LA Times, Ice talked about how he saw the film for the first time and how much he was paid to be in the movie.

He said, “I went to see it at Grauman’s Chinese when it came out. I sat in the back row behind some cats. When I came on the screen, I heard, ‘Look at Ice in that f— hat!’ They was dissing me, so I’m like, ‘Ah, f—.’ But by about 15 minutes into the movie, they were calling me by my name in the movie. And then it just blew up.”

Ice-T continued, “Now, for the record, I got paid like $23,000 for that movie. So welcome to Hollywood. But my next movie was Ricochet with Denzel [Washington].”