Danielle Brooks

Danielle Brooks is an American actress born on September 17, 1989, in Augusta, Georgia, who grew up in Simpsonville, South Carolina, in a Christian household. Her father, Dunnel, works as a BMW employee and serves as a deacon, while her mother, LaRita, is both a teacher and a minister. Brooks began performing at age six in a church nativity play. For the final two years of high school, she attended the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities, a selective arts institution. She was a YoungArts alumna in 2007 and went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Juilliard School in 2011.

Following her graduation from Juilliard, Brooks took roles in two theater productions — the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Servant of Two Masters and Blacken the Bubble — before departing both in 2013 to join the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black. On that show, based on Piper Kerman's memoir, she portrayed Tasha "Taystee" Jefferson, a prison inmate whose role was originally written for only two episodes before being expanded throughout the first season and all subsequent seasons. Brooks was upgraded from a recurring cast member to a series regular for the second season. Her performance earned three NAACP Image Award nominations, a 2014 Young Hollywood Award for Breakthrough, and three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series. In September 2013, she also appeared in a third-season episode of the HBO series Girls. Her film work during this period included Time Out of Mind (2014), I Dream Too Much (2015), The Angry Birds Movie (2016), Sadie (2018), Clemency (2019), and The Day Shall Come (2019). From 2015 to 2017, she appeared in the Netflix comedy series Master of None.

Brooks made her Broadway debut on December 10, 2015, when the revival of The Color Purple opened at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, with Brooks playing Sofia alongside Jennifer Hudson and Cynthia Erivo. The role earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical as well as a Theatre World Award in 2016. In June 2019, she played Beatrice in The Public Theater's production of Much Ado About Nothing, receiving a Drama League Award nomination for that performance.

Brooks returned to Broadway in September 2022, starring as Berniece in the revival of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson, directed by LaTanya Richardson Jackson. Her performance in that production earned her a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play. Also in 2022, she played Leota Adebayo, daughter of Amanda Waller, in James Gunn's Max superhero series Peacemaker, a spin-off of The Suicide Squad (2021). Gunn has stated he wrote the role with Brooks in mind, having been a fan of Orange Is the New Black. The performance brought her a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress on Television nomination. That same year, Brooks hosted the Netflix reality series Instant Dream Home and received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Daytime Program Host.

In 2021, Brooks portrayed gospel singer Mahalia Jackson in the Lifetime biographical film Robin Roberts Presents: Mahalia, a role that earned her nominations from the Critics' Choice Awards, Satellite Awards, and NAACP Image Awards, as well as a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Television Movie in her capacity as an executive producer. From 2021 to 2022, she voiced the character Lillie Carter-Grant in the animated series Karma's World.

Brooks reprised her role as Sofia in the 2023 feature film adaptation of The Color Purple, directed by Blitz Bazawule. The performance earned her nominations for an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. She also appeared in A Minecraft Movie (2025) and voiced the main antagonist Kitty Kat in The Bad Guys 2. Across her career, Brooks has accumulated a Grammy Award, along with nominations for an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, two Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award.

Brooks married Dennis Gelin in January 2022 in Miami, Florida. In November 2019, she gave birth to a daughter. On July 9, 2025, she became an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.