Not too long ago, even East Bay residents might have been forgiven for saying “Mahershala who?” when reading about the names of possible contenders for 2016 Academy Awards.

One of the names frequently popping up in Hollywood trade stories was Mahershala Ali. The 43-year-old was born in Oakland and raised in Hayward. He went to St. Mary’s College in Moraga on a basketball scholarship but became enamored of theater while performing in student productions.

After graduating in 1996, he performed with the California Shakespeare Festival in Orinda before earning a master’s degree from New York University and toiling for more than a decade in a variety of increasingly prominent TV and film roles (“House of Cards,” “Luke Cage” and “Hidden Figures”) before getting his big break this past year as the savvy but compassionate drug dealer Juan in Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight.”

For his powerful performance in “Moonlight,” Ali earned rave reviews and a multitude of awards. He went on to make history by winning an Oscar for best supporting actor, the first Muslim to win such an honor. “Moonlight” also won the best picture award, also making a history by featuring a coming-of-age story about an African-American male protagonist facing persecution at school and at home for being gay.

Ali is now Hollywood royalty, a distinction bolstered by the fact that he graces the July cover of GQ. He poses in a series of tropic-themed photos in which he radiates classic movie star charisma and all-American summer fun.

In the GQ interview with Oakland-based writer Carvell Wallace, Ali explains how he wants to make America great again — but not in a Donald Trump way.

Rather, he wants to use his fame to speak up for love and tolerance. He’s already taken steps in that direction. When accepting the best supporting actor honor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards — following Trump’s proposed Muslim travel ban — Ali made an impassioned call for sanity: “What I’ve learned from working on ‘Moonlight’ is we see what happens when you persecute people. They fold into themselves.”

He said his character Juan saw a young man fold “into himself as a result of the persecution of his community and [took] that opportunity to uplift him and tell him that he mattered, that he was okay, and accept him. And I hope that we do a better job of that.”

In the GQ interview, Ali shares how he, too, comes from often marginalized populations. First, Ali points out that he is a black man who has been navigating America for 43 years.

“When suddenly you go from being followed in Barneys to being fawned over, it will mess with your head,” he says. He explains how he used to ride subway trains and see people hide their rings from him: “those experiences that you have from age 10, when you start getting these little messages that you are something to be feared.”

Even as a celebrity, he’s learned that he’s still not immune to being regarded with suspicion. He explains: “Walking down the street in Berkeley and some cops roll up on you and say straight up, ‘Give me your ID,’ and you’re like, ‘What the (expletive)?’ ”

He converted to Islam in 1999. After 9/11, Ali found himself on a terrorist watch list, he told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross — even though his first name is a shortened version of his official given name, Mahershalalhashbaz, which is not a Muslim name but a Hebrew one.

Still, he says that officials he encountered while traveling would tell him, “Yeah, your name matches the name of a terrorist.” Ali said, “I was like, ‘What terrorist is running around with a Hebrew first name and an Arabic last name? Who’s that guy?’ ”

Despite what Ali describes as his “convoluted” relationship with American patriotism, he tells GQ that he loves America. Like other African-Americans, he sees himself as being something of an “abused child.”

He explained: “We still love the parent, but you can’t overlook the fact that we have a very convoluted relationship with the parent. I absolutely love this country, but like so many people have some real questions and concerns about how things have gone down over the years and where we’re at. And that’s from a place of love, because I want the country to be what it says it is on paper.”