Regina King

Regina King (born January 15, 1971, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) is an American actress and director known for her depth and versatility, earning acclaim for both comedic and dramatic roles. She received an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her performance in Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk (2018).

Early life and career

King’s father was an electrician and her mother a special education teacher; they divorced when she was a child. While still young, King took acting classes, for which she exhibited a pronounced aptitude. At age 14 she was cast as the teenage daughter of a main character in the sitcom 227 (1985–90). She then appeared in the movies Boyz n the Hood (1991), Poetic Justice (1993), and Higher Learning (1995), all directed by John Singleton, and followed with the comedy Friday (1995).

Television and film roles

King’s performance as the wife of a football player (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) in the popular movie Jerry Maguire (1996) brought her additional notice and led to more prominent roles in How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Enemy of the State (both 1998), among others.

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After starring with Chris Rock in Down to Earth, King was cast in the short-lived sitcom Leap of Faith (2002). She returned to movies, appearing in the comedies Legally Blonde 2 (2003) and Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005) and winning praise for her role as a backup singer and lover of Ray Charles in the biopic Ray (2004).

King played a character in season six (2007) of the TV series 24 before being cast in the police drama Southland (2009–13). She also had recurring roles in Shameless in 2014 and in The Leftovers in 2015 and 2017. In the anthology series American Crime (2015–17) she portrayed a different character in each story arc, and for her work on the show she earned two Emmy Awards (2015 and 2016). She won a third Emmy for her performance as a grieving mother in the miniseries Seven Seconds (2018), about an African American boy accidentally run over by a white policeman who tries to cover up the incident.

If Beale Street Could Talk and later work

King earned some of the best reviews of her career for her role in Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), adapted from the 1974 novel by James Baldwin. She was recognized for her performance with an Oscar for best supporting actress. In 2019 she starred in the TV miniseries Watchmen, for which she won a fourth Emmy Award. Her credits from 2021 include the films Flag Day and The Harder They Fall. The latter was a revenge western in which she portrayed a ruthless outlaw, and her costars included Idris Elba and Jonathan Majors.

In 2024 King portrayed Shirley Chisholm, who was the first African American woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress and who in 1972 became the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, in the biopic Shirley. The following year she appeared in Darren Aronofsky’s crime thriller Caught Stealing.

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Directing

King also worked behind the camera beginning in 2013, when she directed the TV movie Let the Church Say Amen. She helmed episodes of numerous TV series over the next few years. In 2020 she made her feature film debut as a director with One Night in Miami…, a critically acclaimed drama. Based on real events, the movie imagines the conversations and interactions that took place in a Miami hotel room on February 25, 1964, between Black nationalist leader Malcolm X, singer Sam Cooke, athlete and actor Jim Brown, and boxer Muhammad Ali—then known as Cassius Clay—hours after Ali had defeated Sonny Liston in a bout that the others had attended.