Nicole Ari Parker

Nicole Ari Parker, born October 7, 1970, in Baltimore, Maryland, is an American actress and model. The only child of health care professional Susan Parker and dentist Donald Parker, she attended Roland Park Country School through high school, where at age 17 she won Best Actress in Maryland's state high school theater competition. She was a member of The Washington Ballet Company before earning an acting degree in 1993 from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Parker's screen work began with a made-for-television film, Other Women's Children, in 1993. Two years later she took a starring role in the independent comedy-drama The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, and also appeared in the television film Divas that same year. In 1997 she appeared in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights, alongside additional film work that year in The End of Violence. Her late 1990s film credits further include Spark, The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, 200 Cigarettes, Loving Jezebel, A Map of the World, and Blue Streak, all released between 1998 and 1999.

In 2000, Parker starred opposite Denzel Washington in the biographical film Remember the Titans, earning an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture. That same year she began playing attorney Teri Joseph in the Showtime drama series Soul Food, an adaptation of George Tillman's 1997 film of the same name. The series ran through 2004, and Parker received five NAACP Image Award nominations for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series for her performance. She returned to film with the 2002 romantic comedy Brown Sugar and subsequently appeared in King's Ransom, Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, Black Dynamite, Imagine That, and Pastor Brown. From 2004 to 2005 she starred in the UPN sitcom Second Time Around, and in 2010 appeared in the ABC legal drama The Deep End, which was cancelled after one season.

In 2012, Parker made her Broadway debut in the drama A Streetcar Named Desire, playing the role of Blanche DuBois. Following that stage work, she had a lead role in the NBC drama pilot Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives in 2013 and a recurring role on Revolution. In 2014 she starred as a series regular in the TNT crime drama Murder in the First, opposite Taye Diggs and Kathleen Robertson. She appeared in the 2016 comedy-drama film Almost Christmas alongside Kimberly Elise and Mo'Nique, and in 2017 starred in the ABC drama Time After Time.

Also in 2017, Parker joined the cast of Fox's prime-time soap opera Empire in a recurring role as Giselle Barker during the fourth season, was promoted to series regular for the fifth season, and remained with the show through its series finale in 2020. During the 2020–21 television season she held a recurring role on NBC's Chicago P.D. In late 2021 she began starring as Lisa Todd Wexley in the HBO Max comedy-drama series And Just Like That..., and in 2022 appeared in the Peacock miniseries The Best Man: The Final Chapters.

Parker eloped with actor Joseph Falasca in March 2001; the marriage ended in divorce later that year. On May 21, 2005, she married her Soul Food co-star Boris Kodjoe in Gundelfingen, Germany. Their daughter Sophie, born March 5, 2005, was diagnosed at birth with spina bifida. Their son Nicolas was born in October 2006 in Atlanta, Georgia, where the family attends Cascade United Methodist Church.