Anika Noni Rose

Anika Noni Rose is an American actress and Broadway performer born on September 6, 1972, in Bloomfield, Connecticut, to Claudia and John Rose, the latter a corporate counsel. She attended Bloomfield High School, where she appeared in a school production during her freshman year. Rose earned a bachelor's degree in theatre from Florida A&M University before pursuing further training at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California.

Rose relocated to New York without employment secured, and within three months had been cast as Rusty in the Broadway production of Footloose. She subsequently participated in workshops and appeared in two Off-Broadway and regional productions built around pre-existing song catalogs: Eli's Comin' Off-Broadway and Me and Mrs. Jones, the latter featuring Lou Rawls and staged in Philadelphia. Neither production advanced beyond its limited engagement despite rumors of transfers. Her Broadway career spans from 1998 to 2026 and includes productions such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Balusters, Uncle Vanya, and A Raisin in the Sun.

Her defining Broadway breakthrough came with the role of Emmie Thibodeaux in Caroline, or Change. For that performance, Rose received the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 2004, along with the Theatre World Award and the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actress the same year. A decade later, she returned to Broadway in the 2014 revival of A Raisin in the Sun, playing Beneatha Younger, a role that earned her a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. In 2024, she appeared as Elena in the Lincoln Center Theatre revival of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre.

On screen, Rose made her film debut in King of the Bingo Game and went on to play Kaya in From Justin to Kelly in 2003. In 2006, she starred as Lorrell Robinson in the Academy Award-winning film Dreamgirls alongside Beyoncé Knowles, Jennifer Hudson, Jamie Foxx, and Eddie Murphy, and her work on the film's soundtrack earned her a Grammy Award nomination. She also appeared in the films Just Add Water and Razor, and starred alongside Jill Scott in The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, directed by Anthony Minghella.

Rose is perhaps most widely recognized for voicing Tiana, the lead character in Disney's 2009 animated feature The Princess and the Frog. On August 19, 2011, she was named a Disney Legend. She reprised the role of Tiana for the Disney special Once Upon a Studio, the series Lego Disney Princess: The Castle Quest, and the theme park attraction Tiana's Bayou Adventure, which opened at Magic Kingdom in June 2024 and at Disneyland in November 2024. A companion Tiana's Palace restaurant opened at Disneyland in September 2023.

In 2010, Rose played Yasmine in Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls, co-starring Phylicia Rashad and Janet Jackson. From 2010 to 2013, she had a recurring guest role on the legal drama The Good Wife, and in 2011 she played Sara Tidwell in the A&E miniseries Bag of Bones, based on the Stephen King novel. In 2012, she guest-starred in the Simpsons episode Gone Abie Gone, voicing Abe Simpson's second wife, Rita LaFleur. She portrayed the adult Kizzy in two episodes of the 2016 miniseries Roots, an adaptation of the Alex Haley novel and a remake of the 1977 series. Additional television work includes a role in the Starz series Power and the leading role in the 2017 BET drama The Quad. Between 2022 and 2023, she played Naomi Cole on the Showtime series Let the Right One In.

In 2020, Rose starred as Jessica Jangle in the Netflix musical Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey. During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown that same year, she created a weekly series called Bedtime Stories for the Littles, in which she read stories to young children, including the Princess and the Frog book Tiana's Growing Experiment. In 2021, she appeared in the Netflix limited series Maid and the Amazon horror series Them. In 2024, Rose voiced Afia in Barry Jenkins' film Mufasa: The Lion King, a performance that earned her a nomination at the 56th NAACP Image Awards, and voiced Cat Burglar's country cousin Sassy in season two of SuperKitties. In 2025, she provided a voice cameo as the Squeal of Fortune in the Disney animated film Zootopia 2. A star was named after Rose through the International Star Registry in 2019.

Rose married actor Jason Dirden in October 2022 at the Paramour Estate in Los Angeles, in a ceremony officiated by Colman Domingo. The couple announced their marriage publicly in Brides magazine on January 16, 2023.