Jennifer Hudson

Jennifer Kate Hudson, also known as J.Hud, is an American singer, actress, producer, and talk show host born on September 12, 1981. She achieved EGOT status in 2022 after winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award, making her the youngest woman and third African-American recipient to accomplish this. In 2013, Hudson was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2020, Time named her to its list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Hudson was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in the Englewood neighborhood as a Baptist. She is the youngest of three children born to Darnell Donerson and Samuel Simpson, a bus driver, and was raised primarily by her mother alongside her sister Julia and brother Jason. At age seven, Hudson began singing in her church choir and participating in community theater with the help of her maternal grandmother. She graduated from Dunbar Vocational High School in 1999, briefly attended Langston University, and later registered at Kennedy–King College. Her early musical influences include Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, and Mariah Carey.

In 2002, Hudson signed her first recording contract with Righteous Records, an independent label based in Chicago. She was later released from the contract to compete on the third season of the reality series American Idol in 2004, where she finished in seventh place. Following her appearance on the show, she recorded a duet on Meat Loaf's 2006 album Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose before signing with Arista Records later that year.

Hudson made her feature film debut as Effie White in the 2006 musical film Dreamgirls. Her performance earned her widespread critical acclaim, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, making her the youngest African-American winner in that category. She also received a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and 29 film critics awards for the role. In 2007, she became the first African-American singer to appear on the cover of Vogue magazine and was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Her self-titled debut studio album, Jennifer Hudson, was released in September 2008 by Arista Records. It debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart and won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album at the 51st Annual Grammy Awards. The album featured the lead single "Spotlight", followed by "If This Isn't Love" and "Giving Myself". Hudson later released her second studio album, I Remember Me, in 2011, and her third, JHUD, through RCA Records in 2014, both of which reached the top ten on the Billboard 200. In 2024, she released her fourth album, The Gift of Love, on Interscope Records.

Throughout her acting career, Hudson appeared in films such as Sex and the City, The Secret Life of Bees, Fragments, Winnie Mandela, Black Nativity, Sing, Cats, and the 2021 musical biopic Respect, in which she portrayed Aretha Franklin. Her television credits include roles on Smash, Empire, and Confirmation. On stage, Hudson performed in the 2015 Broadway revival of The Color Purple and won a Tony Award as a producer for the musical A Strange Loop in 2022.

Between 2017 and 2019, Hudson served as a coach on the British and American editions of the reality competition series The Voice, becoming the first female coach to win the British version. In 2022, she launched her own daytime talk show, The Jennifer Hudson Show.