Taraji P. Henson

Taraji P. Henson studied acting at Howard University and spent her first Hollywood years on guest spots before Baby Boy, in 2001, gave her something to hold. Hustle & Flow followed in 2005, and then David Fincher cast her as Queenie in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which brought an Academy Award nomination for a part written mostly as a function: the woman who raises the strange child.

Her real gift is volume control. Cookie Lyon on Empire is the loudest character on American television, an ex-convict in furs reclaiming her stake in a music empire, and Henson plays her at full blast while keeping a private channel open underneath, so you can always see the calculation happening. Then she can do the exact opposite. As Katherine G. Johnson in Hidden Figures she plays a mathematician whose entire method is refusing to be provoked, and the film's best scene is a single furious speech that ninety minutes of restraint have paid for.

Her accolades include a Golden Globe alongside nominations for an Academy Award, six Emmys and a Tony, and Time named her one of its hundred most influential people in both 2016 and 2024. She is also a producer, an author and a mental health advocate. The frustration in the filmography is that the industry keeps hiring the wrong half of her range: a lot of detectives, in Person of Interest and Date Night, and comedies powered entirely by her energy, with comparatively few roles as demanding as Katherine Johnson. When she gets one, as in The Color Purple in 2023, what has been going unused becomes obvious.