Alfre Woodard

Alfre LaWanda Jeen Woodard is an American actress born on November 8, 1952, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Known for portraying strong-willed and dignified roles across stage and screen, she has received four Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards, along with nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Grammy Awards. In 2020, The New York Times named her one of the 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century. Outside of her creative endeavors, Woodard is a board member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a founder of Artists for a New South Africa.

Woodard was raised in Tulsa as the youngest of three children born to Constance, a homemaker, and Marion H. Woodard, an entrepreneur and interior designer. She was a cheerleader at Bishop Kelley High School and graduated in 1970. She subsequently studied drama at Boston University, graduating with her degree and later receiving an honorary doctoral degree in fine arts from the university in 2004.

Woodard began her professional acting career on stage in 1974 at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC, before performing Off-Broadway and moving to Los Angeles in 1976. Her breakthrough came in 1977 when she originated the role of the woman who lost her stuff in the Off-Broadway play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. She made her feature film debut in 1978's Remember My Name and gained major industry recognition for her role in the 1983 biography film Cross Creek, which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Later that same year, she won her first Primetime Emmy Award for her guest role on Hill Street Blues.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Woodard established a prominent career in television and film. She portrayed Dr. Roxanne Turner on the NBC medical drama St. Elsewhere, earning Primetime Emmy nominations in 1986 and 1988. She won additional Emmy Awards for her roles in L.A. Law (1987), the HBO film Miss Evers' Boys (1997)—which also earned her Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards—and The Practice (2003). Her notable film appearances during this era include Grand Canyon, Passion Fish, Heart and Souls, Crooklyn, How to Make an American Quilt, Primal Fear, Star Trek: First Contact, and Down in the Delta.

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Woodard appeared in film projects such as What's Cooking?, Love & Basketball, K-PAX, The Core, The Forgotten, Beauty Shop, Something New, The Family That Preys, and 12 Years a Slave. On television, she joined the cast of Desperate Housewives as Betty Applewhite from 2005 to 2006, securing another Emmy nomination. Her later work includes playing Mariah Stokes-Dillard in the Netflix Marvel series Luke Cage, starring in Juanita, voicing Sarabi in The Lion King, and earning a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Actress for her lead performance in Clemency.