Biographie

Named after his father's younger brother, Pfc. Leonard Kravitz, who was killed in action in Korea on 7 March 1951 while suppressing a Chinese attack and saving most of his platoon. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Lenny has joined the fight to get his uncle the Medal of Honor. Supporters believe the Medal of Honor was denied to Private Karvitz because he was Jewish.

Lenny's father was of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage (from a family from Eastern Europe, either Russia or Ukraine). Lenny's mother was of Afro-Bahamian and African-American ancestry.

Godmother of his daughter, Zoë Kravitz, is Marisa Tomei.

Attended high school with guitarist Slash from Guns N' Roses.

Says his father, in the military, was a "hard-core" Green Beret (Special Forces) veteran.

[on the wearing of fur] My great-grandmother was a Cherokee. With the Indians, it wasn't slaughter. I have some vintage fur. I don't buy new stuff.

I want to do interiors, furniture. I want to do architecture, although I'm not an architect. Nor am I a trained interior designer.

I had no idea 'The Hunger Games' was so big. I didn't even know the book. I had been living under my own rock.

[on his mother explaining his racial heritage - a Russian Jewish father, and a Bahamian mother] I remember her telling me, 'I want you to know your heritage. You are no more one thing than another, but society will only see you as black'. I don't even know if I understood what that really meant, but I think I somehow got it, and got it more a couple of years later - that people weren't going to see both sides. As people used to say back in the day, and maybe still say today, one drop of black blood and you're black. That's it.

[on why he likes acting] It's not all about me. When I make music , it is all about me - I write it, I record it, I produce it. I'm involved in engineering and mixing. It's a big me-fest. That's fine, that's how it works, but it's nice to walk away from yourself and serve a director's vision and a character - and it has nothing to do with you.