From Crash, where he played an upwardly-mobile, rather wimpy businessman to Hustle and Flow where Terrence Howard impressed us as a struggling pimp, we can't take our eyes off this green-eyed wonder. He'll tackle another genre this summer as part of the cast of the comic-book spin off Iron Man. This month, you can catch Mr. Howard as an inspiring swimming coach in the urban underdog story Pride. The actor told us about his training in the swimming pool and his research into his real life character, a fellow who turned around a whole neighborhood by bringing a youth center back to life and creating a winning swim team from scratch.

Talented Terrence is one spiffy dresser. When we chatted with him at Beverly Hills' 4 Seasons hotel recently, he was wearing a light blue suit, a very pale violet shirt, stripe tie and a really cool star-shaped diamond lapel pin.

Terrence Howard Credit: jpistudios.com

TeenHollywood: Oh, I love that pin on your lapel. What's the story behind that?

Terrence: When I was in school, I learned about those asteroids in the Kuyper Belt that are made up of diamonds. There is a complete diamond, over a mile and a half in diameter. I found a company that actually grows diamonds through a process called CVD which is Chemical Vapor Deposition. They grow a one carat diamond in a week. In order to mine diamonds, you have to move on average 250 tons of earth, not to mention the destruction of land but the destruction of the ecosystems. So these are now the compassionate diamonds and I would encourage people to look to the future and no longer destroy anything.