Jennifer Hudson

Jennifer Kate Hudson, born September 12, 1981, in Chicago, Illinois, is an American singer, actress, producer, and talk show host. The youngest of three children born to Darnell Donerson and Samuel Simpson, a Greyhound Lines bus driver, Hudson grew up with her older sister Julia and her brother Jason, raised primarily by their mother in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. She was raised Baptist and attended Dunbar Vocational High School, graduating in 1999. She began performing at age seven, singing with her church choir and participating in community theater, an involvement she has credited to her late maternal grandmother, Julia. Among her cited musical influences are Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, and Mariah Carey. After graduating, Hudson enrolled at Langston University but left after one semester and later registered at Kennedy–King College. In January 2002, she signed her first recording contract with Righteous Records, a Chicago-based independent label, before being released from that agreement to pursue other opportunities.

Hudson first gained national attention in 2004 as a finalist on the third season of American Idol, where she placed seventh. During the competition, she received the highest number of votes in the Top 9 round following her April 6, 2004 performance of Elton John's "Circle of Life," before being eliminated during the Top 7 show. Prior to her Idol audition, she had been performing aboard the Disney Wonder cruise ship as one of the Muses from Hercules. In May 2009, MTV ranked her the sixth greatest contestant in American Idol history, noting her elimination as the most shocking in the show's run.

Her screen career began in earnest when she was cast in November 2005 as Effie White in the film adaptation of the musical Dreamgirls, a role she won over hundreds of other performers, including Fantasia Barrino. The film, which also starred Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé Knowles, and Eddie Murphy, began production on January 9, 2006, and entered limited release on December 25, 2006. Her performance, particularly her rendition of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," earned widespread critical acclaim. She received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, recognition from the Screen Actors Guild, and on February 25, 2007, the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, making her the youngest African-American recipient of that award at the time. Across critics' circles, she collected 29 awards for Best Supporting Actress and Breakthrough Performer of 2006. The song "Love You I Do" from the film was nominated for the 2007 Academy Award for Best Original Song and won the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.

In November 2006, Hudson signed with Arista Records. Her self-titled debut studio album, released in 2008, peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 and won Best R&B Album at the 51st Annual Grammy Awards. Her second album, I Remember Me, followed in 2011, and her third, JHUD, was released in 2014 through RCA Records; both debuted within the top ten of the Billboard 200. Her fourth studio album, The Gift of Love, was released in 2024 through Interscope Records, marking her first solo project in a decade.

Beyond music, Hudson has appeared in a wide range of films, including Sex and the City (2008), The Secret Life of Bees (2008), Winnie Mandela (2011), Black Nativity (2013), Sing (2016), Cats (2019), and Goat (2026). In 2021, she portrayed Aretha Franklin in the musical biopic Respect. On television, she has appeared in Smash (2012), Empire (2015), and Confirmation (2016). She served as a coach on both the UK and US versions of The Voice between 2017 and 2019, becoming the first female coach to lead a winning team on the UK edition. In 2022, her talk show, The Jennifer Hudson Show, premiered.

Hudson's Broadway career spans from 2004 to 2015, during which she appeared in The Color Purple, Hair, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. She starred in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple in 2015. As a producer, she won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2022 for A Strange Loop. That same year, Hudson became the youngest woman and third African-American to achieve EGOT status, having received Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards across her career. She was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013, and Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2020.