Taraji Penda Henson is an American actress and singer. She is best known for her roles as Yvette in Baby Boy , Shug in Hustle and Flow and Queenie in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button , for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2009. In 2009, she appeared in Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself as April, an alcoholic singer. She currently co-stars in the CBS series Person of Interest. Henson was born in Southeast Washington, D.C., the daughter of Bernice Gordon, a corporate manager at Woodward & Lothrop, and Boris Henson, a janitor and... fabricator. She is a relative of Matthew Henson, discoverer of the Geographic North Pole. Her first and middle name are of Swahili origin, taraji meaning hope. Henson spent summers at her grandparents' house in suburban Southern Maryland. She attended Oxon Hill High School in Oxon Hill, Maryland. She first attended NC A&T, where she started a major in Electrical Engineering. She later transferred to Howard University.
more