Taraji P Henson: podcast appearances and interviews

Taraji Penda Henson is an American actress, producer, author, and mental health advocate born on September 11, 1970. She studied acting at Howard University and made her film debut with the crime film Streetwise in 1998. Henson gained recognition for roles such as a prostitute in Hustle & Flow in 2005 and Queenie, a nursing home caretaker, in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 2008, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Other notable films include Baby Boy, The Karate Kid, Think Like a Man, Acrimony, What Men Want, The Best of Enemies, and The Color Purple. Her television career includes co-starring as Joss Carter in CBS's Person of Interest from 2011 to 2013 and starring as Cookie Lyon in the Fox series Empire from 2015 to 2020. Her portrayal of Cookie Lyon earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama and Emmy nominations in 2015 and 2016. She has also been nominated for Emmy Awards for her work in the Lifetime movie Taken from Me: The Tiffany Rubin Story and as a guest star in ABC's Abbott Elementary. In addition to her acting career, Henson is an author; her autobiography, Around the Way Girl, was published in 2016. She has received several accolades including a Golden Globe Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2019. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2016 and 2024.