Ernie Hudson

Ernie Hudson is an American actor born Earnest Lee Hudson on December 17, 1945, in Benton Harbor, Michigan. His mother, Maggie Donald, died of tuberculosis when Hudson was two months old, and he never knew his father. He was raised by his maternal grandmother, Arrana Donald. After high school, Hudson enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps but received a medical discharge after three months due to asthma. He subsequently relocated to Detroit, where he became the resident playwright at Concept East, the oldest Black theater company in the United States.

Hudson pursued formal training at Wayne State University, graduating in 1973, and founded the Actors' Ensemble Theatre, where he and other young Black writers directed and performed in their own works. He later began a doctoral program at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, departing to appear in a stage production of The Great White Hope. He also studied toward a Master of Fine Arts in acting at Yale School of Drama before leaving after a year to appear in Leadbelly. In 2009, Hudson appeared on Broadway in Joe Turner's Come and Gone.

Hudson gained widespread recognition playing Winston Zeddemore in the 1984 feature film Ghostbusters and its 1989 sequel, Ghostbusters II. He auditioned to reprise the role for the animated series The Real Ghostbusters, but the part was given to Arsenio Hall. Among his earlier film work was a role in Penitentiary II (1982). He went on to appear in Leviathan (1989), The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992), in which he played the developmentally disabled handyman Solomon, The Crow (1994) as Police Sergeant Albrecht, Airheads (1994), The Basketball Diaries (1995), and Congo (1995) as the character Munro. Hudson played Harry McDonald, the FBI superior of Sandra Bullock's character, in Miss Congeniality (2000), and appeared as Principal Turner in the 2006 television film The Ron Clark Story. He returned to the Ghostbusters franchise in the 2016 reboot, playing Bill Jenkins, and confirmed his involvement in Ghostbusters: Afterlife in August 2019, reuniting with original cast members Sigourney Weaver, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and Annie Potts. Hudson appeared in the 2022 drama film Prisoner's Daughter alongside Kate Beckinsale and Brian Cox.

On television, Hudson's most prominent role was Warden Leo Glynn on HBO's Oz, which ran from 1997 to 2003. His son Ernie Hudson Jr. co-starred on the series as Muslim inmate Hamid Khan. Earlier television appearances included St. Elsewhere (1984) and The Last Precinct (1986), as well as guest roles on The Dukes of Hazzard and The A-Team. He held a recurring role as Dr. Fields on The Secret Life of the American Teenager from 2008 to 2013, and appeared in a recurring capacity on the final season of Law & Order from 2009 to 2010 as Lieutenant Anita Van Buren's boyfriend and later fiancé. In 2011, Hudson played Stuart Owens in Torchwood: Miracle Day. Beginning in 2015, he joined the cast of Grace and Frankie as Jacob, an organic farmer and romantic interest for Lily Tomlin's character Frankie Bergstein, a role he held through 2020. From 2019 to 2020, Hudson starred in L.A.'s Finest as the estranged father of Gabrielle Union's character. He provided the voice of Agent Bill Fowler in Transformers: Prime from 2010 to 2013, and in January 2023 guest voiced Grini Millegi, a Dowutin gangster, on Star Wars: The Bad Batch. From 2022 to 2024, Hudson appeared as Herbert "Magic" Williams on the NBC drama Quantum Leap.

Hudson married his first wife, Jeannie Moore, in 1963; they had two sons, Ernie Hudson Jr. and Rahaman Hudson, before divorcing in 1976. In 1985, he married Linda Kingsberg, a former flight attendant, and they have two sons, Andrew and Ross. On June 8, 2024, a portion of South Fair Avenue near Hudson's childhood home in Benton Harbor was given the honorary name "Ernie Hudson Way."