Taraji Penda Henson ( ; born September 11, 1970) is an American actress. She studied acting at Howard University and began her Hollywood career in guest roles on several television shows before making her breakthrough in Baby Boy (2001). She played a prostitute in Hustle & Flow (2005) and a single mother of a disabled child in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2010, she appeared in the action comedy Date Night and the drama The Karate Kid, and in 2016, she starred as mathematician Katherine Johnson in the critically acclaimed drama Hidden Figures.
Henson has also had an extensive career in television. She starred in the Lifetime television film Taken from Me: The Tiffany Rubin Story (2011), which earned her a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. From 2011 to 2013, she co-starred as Detective Jocelyn Carter in the CBS drama Person of Interest. From 2015 to 2020, she starred as Cookie Lyon in the Fox drama series Empire, for which she became the first African-American woman to win the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series. She also won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards in 2015 and 2016.
In 2016, Time named Henson one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Later that year, she released a New York Times best selling autobiography titled Around the Way Girl.
Early life and education
Taraji Penda Henson was born September 11, 1970, in Southeast Washington, D.C., the daughter of Bernice (née Gordon), a corporate manager at Woodward & Lothrop, and Boris Lawrence Henson, a janitor and metal fabricator. She has often spoken of the influence of her maternal grandmother, Patsy Ballard, who accompanied her at the Academy Awards the year she was nominated. Her first and middle names are of Swahili origin: Taraji ("hope") and Penda ("love"). According to a mitochondrial DNA analysis, her matrilineal lineage can be traced to the Masa people of Cameroon. She has said that North Pole explorer Matthew Henson was "the brother of [her] great-great-grandfather."
Henson graduated from Oxon Hill High School in Oxon Hill, Maryland, in 1988. She attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where she intended to study electrical engineering, before transferring to Howard University to study drama. To pay for college, she worked mornings as a secretary at The Pentagon and evenings as a singing-dancing waitress on a dinner-cruise ship, the Spirit of Washington.
Film career
Early career (2001–2014) Henson received her SAG membership card in the early 1990s for doing three roles as a background performer. Her first prominent role was in the 2001 comedy-drama film Baby Boy, where she portrayed Yvette, alongside singer Tyrese Gibson.
In 2005, Henson was in the independent film Hustle & Flow as Shug, the love interest of Terrence Howard, who portrayed the male lead DJay. She made her singing debut in the film, which was nominated for two Academy awards and won one. In 2008, she appeared with Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, where she played Queenie, Benjamin's mother, and for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. In an interview with Lauren Viera of The Chicago Tribune, she noted that "Queenie is the embodiment of unconditional love."
Henson acted in two Tyler Perry films, The Family That Preys in 2008 and I Can Do Bad All By Myself in 2009. In 2010, she appeared in the remake of The Karate Kid with Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan. Though reviews were lackluster, the film was a commercial success.
In 2011, Henson starred as Tiffany Rubin in the Lifetime Movie Network film Taken from Me: The Tiffany Rubin Story. It was based on true events in the life of a New York woman whose son, Kobe, was abducted by his biological father to South Korea. Her portrayal of Rubin received positive reviews and earned her several award nominations, including a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie.
In 2012, Henson was in the large ensemble cast film Think Like a Man, based on Steve Harvey's 2009 book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. She reprised the role in the film's sequel, Think Like a Man Too, released in June 2014.