Taraji P. Henson

Taraji P. Henson Bio

Taraji Penda Henson (born September 11, 1970) is an American actress whose career spans film, television, and stage. Her accolades include a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and nominations for an Academy Award, a Tony Award, and six Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2016 and again in 2024, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She is widely recognized for her role as Cookie Lyon on the Fox musical drama series Empire.

Early Life and Background

Taraji Penda Henson was born on September 11, 1970, in Southeast Washington, D.C. She is the daughter of Bernice Henson, a corporate manager at Woodward & Lothop, and Boris Lawrence Henson, a janitor and metal fabricator. She has spoken often about the strong influence of her maternal grandmother, Patsy Ballard, who accompanied her to the Academy Awards the year she received her nomination. Henson’s first and middle names come from the Swahili language, with Taraji meaning hope and Penda meaning love.

Henson graduated from Oxon Hill High School in Oxon Hill, Maryland, in 1988. She briefly attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where she originally intended to study electrical engineering, before transferring to Howard University to study drama. To help pay for her education, she worked mornings as a secretary at The Pentagon and evenings as a singing and dancing waitress on a dinner-cruise ship called the Spirit of Washington. She later earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Howard University.

Path to Acting

Henson received her Screen Actors Guild membership card in the early 1990s after working as a background performer on three productions. Her first prominent film role came in 2001 with the comedy-drama Baby Boy, directed by John Singleton, in which she played Yvette alongside Tyrese Gibson. She also built her early resume through guest appearances on television shows such as Smart Guy, Sister, Sister, House, and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

While building her career, Henson earned a SAG membership card for doing three roles as a background performer. She also earned a SAG membership card for doing three roles as a background performer. She also gained experience in live performance with productions of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and the Pasadena Playhouse’s Above the Fold. These early opportunities helped prepare her for the breakthrough roles that followed.

Taraji P. Henson Career

Early Career (1992-2014)

Henson made her film debut in the 1998 crime film Streetwise and went on to appear in projects such as The Family That Preys in 2008 and I Can Do Bad All By Myself in 2009. In 2005, she starred in the independent film Hustle & Flow as Shug, the love interest of DJay, played by Terrence Howard. Her performance included her singing debut, providing vocals for the song It’s Hard out Here for a Pimp by Three 6 Mafia, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2006.

In 2008, Henson appeared in David Fincher’s drama The Curious Case of Benjamin Button alongside Brad Pitt, playing Queenie, the mother of the title character. The role earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She also starred in Tyler Perry’s The Karate Kid in 2010 and the ensemble film Think Like a Man in 2012, later reprising her role in Think Like a Man Too in 2014. On television, she co-starred as Joss Carter in the CBS drama Person of Interest from 2011 until her character’s death in 2013, and she earned an Emmy nomination for her lead role in the Lifetime film Taken from Me: The Tiffany Rubin Story in 2011.

Breakthrough (2015-2020)

In 2015, Henson was cast to headline the Fox series Empire, a musical drama set in the hip-hop recording industry. She played Cookie Lyon opposite her former Hustle & Flow co-star Terrence Howard. The show debuted on January 7, 2015, and earned wide critical praise and commercial success. In July 2015, she received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and became the first African-American actress to win the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series.

On January 10, 2016, Henson won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama for Empire, becoming the third African-American actress to win the award. She was also named the 2015 Entertainer of the Year at the 46th NAACP Image Awards for her work on Empire and the film No Good Deed. In 2016, she starred as mathematician Katherine Johnson in the biographical drama Hidden Figures, which became a major box-office success and won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. Henson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2019.

Notable Works and Milestones

Among Henson’s most recognized projects are Hustle & Flow (2005), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Person of Interest (2011-2013), Empire (2015-2020), and Hidden Figures (2016). She also published a New York Times best-selling autobiography titled Around the Way Girl in 2016. In 2019, Henson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in recognition of her contributions to entertainment.

Taraji P. Henson Award Nominations

Taraji P. Henson has earned a long list of nominations throughout her career in film and television. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 2009. She has been nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for Taken from Me: The Tiffany Rubin Story, and twice for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Empire in 2015 and 2016. She has also received additional Primetime Emmy nominations, a Tony Award nomination, and nominations from the Screen Actors Guild, the BET Awards, and the NAACP Image Awards across multiple years of her career.

Taraji P. Henson Awards Won

Henson has collected several major awards for her work as an actress. In 2015, she won the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series for Empire, becoming the first African-American woman to win the award. In January 2016, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama for Empire. She shared in the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture for Hidden Figures in 2017, and she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2019.

Taraji P. Henson Family

Henson was raised in Washington, D.C., by her mother Bernice Henson and her father Boris Lawrence Henson. Her maternal grandmother, Patsy Ballard, played a meaningful role in her upbringing and joined her at the Academy Awards the year she was nominated. Henson later named her mental health foundation, the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation, after her father. The organization works to address cultural mental illness in the African-American community.

Personal Life

In 1994, Henson gave birth to her son, Marcell. His father, Henson’s high-school sweetheart William LaMarr Johnson, was killed in 2003. On May 13, 2018, Henson became engaged to former NFL cornerback Kelvin Hayden; the couple had been together since 2015. She confirmed the end of their engagement during an October 19, 2020, appearance on The Breakfast Club. Henson lives in the United States and is a Christian who has described acting as a spiritual experience.