JESSICA RINALDI/Reuters/Corbis
Sadly for Snipes, this role is all too real.
The 48-year-old actor arrived Thursday at the Federal Correctional Institution McKean in the small Pennsylvania town of Lewis Run, which sounds more like a character Snipes would play rather than a place. He’s due to serve three years for a failure to file income tax returns.
(See where Wesley Snipes comes in TIME’s top 10 tax dodgers.)
“We recognize that he is high profile, but we treat all our inmates the same,” spokeswoman Shirley White told the AP recently. But it’s not looking like the hardest of labors: barracks are two to a room, daily showers take place as do double-feature movie showings Friday through Sunday. Though as the AP pointed out, no NC-17, R or X ratings are allowed, which means that most of Snipes’ oeuvre, including prison-based features such as Undisputed and Brooklyn’s Finest, is off limits.
(See TIME’s top 10 movies of 2010.)
On the down side, the daily wake-up call is 6:35 am, there are five head counts — three coming during the night — with maximum earnings mere pennies an hour for kitchen, laundry or other chores. But Snipes will be able to spend up to $290 a month at the prison commissary, which should at least keep him in copies of Variety.