Born on February 11, 1974, Isaiah Mustafa was the last to be born among the 7 children of Wali Mustafa and Shanidah Mustafah. As their last name implies, Isaiah came from a Muslim family. Their main business was a limousine service at the time. He took history subject at Arizona State and in the year 2000, Isaiah was able to establish his own business – Jo Jo’s Barbecue, which was a restaurant located at Melrose Avenue in L.A. The restaurant is now closed as Isaiah found a new career path to take.
Today, you may probably know Isaiah Mustafa from various TV commercials from Old Spice. He was the main lead of the commercial called The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. Before his acting career, Mustafa started out in a sports career. He first played high school basketball and ran tracks at Santa Clara HS located in Oxnard, California. At the time, Mustafa didn’t play any football yet still tried out for the football team of Moorpark College. Mustafa made the team and began as a free safety and then became a wide receiver. He then earned a football scholarship for Arizona State University in 1995. He was given the position of wide receiver for the school’s team Arizona State Sun Devils. However, Mustafa had an unclear argument with the team’s coach and was benched his whole senior year. Mustafa had his chance to play for his team in 1997′s Rose Bowl against the Ohio State Buckeyes. Mustafa was then discovered by a sports agent and advised him to show up for NFL tryouts. And although Mustafa assumed to be a high school teacher after his college graduation, Mustafa eventually made it in the NFL and was assigned to the practice squad for the Houston Oilers, which is now known as Tennessee Titans. He was then assigned to NFL European team Barcelona Dragons in the year 1998. After a year from the team, he joined the Oakland Raiders and Cleveland Browns’ team as part of the practice squad. Isaiah Mustafa then went to Seattle Seahawk’s training camp in 2000.
After the training camp from Seahawks’, Mustafa decided to enter the acting industry. He played only short roles at first in different TV programs and then achieved popularity from his monologues in the Old Spice’s ad campaign – The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. It was the first commercial of Mustafa and was led by Tom Kuntz‘s direction. Mustafa appeared in different series that was created from a 3-day production and was posted on YouTube. The videos were customized and were hilarious with Isaiah resurrecting his role from the Old Spice ad campaign.
As for the personal life of Isaiah Mustafa, he is a comic book fan, specially of Batman and Spiderman comic books. In fact, due to his familiarity with Doctor Doom’s first name, he was able to answer the question as to what the first name of Doctor Frankenstein was and landed him the $47,000 prize from the Weakest Link. The money helped Isaiah Mustafa in pursuing his acting career. Furthermore, he named his daughter from the character in Batman, Harley Quinn. Isaiah Mustafa is also a fraternity member of Pi Kappa Alpha; his stint started out while attending in Arizona State University.
Sexy, Sexy Isaiah!