Taraji earned her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Queenie, Benjamin’s (Brad Pitt) adoptive mother, in the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in which Pitt’s character is born an old man and ages backward.

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Taraji’s portrayal as the pregnant prostitute Shug, opposite actor Terrence Howard earned her the award for Best Actress at the BET Awards 2006 in the Academy Award-winning drama Hustle and Flow.

The veteran actress made her feature film debut in John Singleton’s 2001 drama Baby Boy, following several television appearances. Taraji’s role as Yvette, the baby mother of Jody Summers, played by singer and actor Tyrese Gibson, became one of her best-known roles.

Taraji is Katherine G. Johnson, one of three NASA mathematicians who were instrumental in the launching of a successful U.S. Space Program. Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae played Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson.

Boy, what an era. Taraji as Cookie Lyon in Lee Daniels’ Empire saw the actress return to the screen with Terrence Howard. "I said no to Cookie at first," Henson once told The New York Times. "I thought she was horrible. But as an actor, you can’t judge. Your job is to empathize with that character and to tell that character’s truth. Once I started really looking at her as a mother, that changed.