Profiles in Black History is a project of our Justice Works Anti-Racism Team. A new profile will be spotlighted every day during Black History Month.
Regina King
Photo by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
“Born and raised in Los Angeles, the daughter of a teacher and an electrical engineer (her parents divorced when she was eight), King seems to have moved smoothly from teenage sitcom stardom into the flowering black cinema scene of the 1990s, making her movie debut in John Singleton’s seminal Boyz n the Hood, then continuing with mainstream hits such as Jerry Maguire, Enemy of the State, Ray, Miss Congeniality 2 and Legally Blonde 2, and TV shows 24 and Southland.” “...[S]he has won an Oscar, four Emmys and numerous other awards for her performances in a string of acclaimed titles, including Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk, the prescient comic-book miniseries Watchmen and the Netflix race-crime drama Seven Seconds ... Now she is also making waves as a director. Her debut feature, One Night in Miami, was the first film directed by an African American woman ever to screen at the Venice film festival … She has also advocated for structural change in the industry. Accepting her Golden Globe for Beale Street in 2019, she vowed that 50% of her team would be women on her future projects, and challenged others to do the same.”
Learn more about Regina King:
“'Being black in America requires emotional aerobics': Regina King on 'powder keg' movie One Night in Miami” by Steve Rose; https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jan/08/regina-king-one-night-miami-oscar-winning-beale-street-actor-black-lives-matter
Movie Recommendation: One Night In Miami: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10612922/
Rebecca Riley is a writer and filmmaker who lives in North County San Diego.