Actress Taraji P. Henson seemed to have the deck stacked against her – failing out of her college engineering major, switching to acting while working days and nights part time to pay for school, then moving to Hollywood with a young son and just $700 in her pocket. After a few more years of struggle, her perseverance paid off, beginning with a role in John Singleton’s “Baby Boy” (2001) and then a breakout performance opposite Terrence Howard in the acclaimed “Hustle & Flow,” (2005), performing her share of the Oscar-winning single, “It’s Hard out Here for a Pimp.” Henson went on to appear in Singleton’s “Four Brothers,” before providing another stand-out performance in another critical favorite, the 2007 Don Cheadle vehicle, “Talk to Me.”Born Sept. 11, 1970, Henson dreamed of acting since she was a child growing up in Washington, DC. During her sophomore year in high school, she auditioned for the Duke Ellington School of the Performing Arts, but was not accepted; convinced that she did not have what it took to become an actress. Henson turned back to her schoolwork and, inspired by her father, she attended a summer science program at the University of District Columbia, where she not only learned to build circuit boards, robotic arms and alarm clocks, she had fun doing it. But after failing a pre-calculus course in college at North Carolina A & T, she realized that engineering was not in the cards, either.
However, her father encouraged her to go back to what she loved doing most – performing. Henson took his advice, enrolling at Howard University to major in acting. To work her way through school, she got a secretarial job at the Pentagon in the morning and worked as a singing and dancing waitress on a dinner cruise each evening, squeezing classes in between. After graduation Henson, who now was raising a young son as a single mother, was still unsure what to do with herself. She was again encouraged by her father to pursue her dream and move to Hollywood. With $700 in donations from friends and family in her pocket, Henson – and her son – made the big leap.
But success was still a few years away. Henson made contact with a cousin already living in Hollywood, and, while working another regular job – including substitute teaching – she set about the arduous task of finding a talent manager and agent who could secure acting jobs for her. After several starts and stops, she secured representation and, at the age of 26, landed the role of 16-year-old Monique on an episode of the sitcom, “Smart Guy” (WB, 1997-99).
Established as an actress at last, Henson went on to appear in guest shots in “Sister, Sister,” (WB, 1994-99), “ER” (NBC, 1994- ), “Felicity,” (WB, 1998-2002) and “Strong Medicine” (Lifetime, 2000-06). She had a bit role as a student in the feature comedy, “The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle” (2000) and in the television movie, “Murder, She Wrote: The Last Free Man” (2001).
But it was in director John Singleton’s “Baby Boy,” a drama portraying the epidemic of absentee fathers in economically depressed African American communities, that she truly stood out. In her role as Yvette, the strong-willed girlfriend of Tyrese Gibson’s character, Jody, Henson drew critical raves and was nominated for a Black Reel Award for her performance. The role paid off in more ways than one – it also earned her steady work as a regular on the female cop series, “The Division” (Lifetime, 2001-04), playing Inspector Raina Washington.
But the best was yet to come for Henson, in the form of a script entitled “Hustle & Flow.” Sent to her by Singleton, who was producing the film for the film’s writer-director, Craig Brewer, Henson landed the pivotal role of Shug, a pregnant prostitute and live-in girlfriend who provides both vocal and emotional support to pimp-turned record producer Djay, played by Terrence Howard. Henson may have had limited musical education compared to acting, but she soon found herself singing the film’s Oscar-winning song, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp;” going on to perform the single at the 2006 Academy Awards, alongside the songwriters, Three 6 Mafia.
Her star firmly on the rise, Henson went on to work with Singleton and Howard again in the 2005 crime drama, “Four Brothers,” giving her all in a small but powerful role opposite Andre 3000. She also kept busy with guest parts in “House M.D.” (Fox, 2004- ) and “ CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” (CBS, 2000- ) before returning to the big screen in the 2006 manic crime thriller, “Smokin’ Aces.”
With her role in 2007’s “Talk to Me,” Henson was poised to draw critical raves again. The film, starring Don Cheadle, told the real-life story of Petey Greene, an ex-con who went from a prison cell to hosting an influential 1960s morning radio show in Washington DC, revolutionizing the role of African Americans over the airwaves. Henson played Greene’s assertive girlfriend Vernell, instrumental in his rise to prominence. Film critic Roger Ebert singled her character out as “an unstoppable force and immovable object rolled into one.”