Regina Taylor

Regina Taylor is an American actress, playwright, and director born on August 22, 1960, in Dallas, Texas. She grew up partly in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where her family relocated when she was twelve, before returning to Dallas, where she graduated from L. G. Pinkston High School in 1977. She went on to study at Southern Methodist University, during which time she appeared in two made-for-television films: Nurse (1980) and Crisis at Central High (1981). Her performance in the latter, in which she portrayed Minnijean Brown, one of the Little Rock Nine who integrated Little Rock Central High School in 1957, drew praise from New York Times critic John O'Connor.

Taylor's film career gained broader attention with her supporting role in the 1989 drama Lean on Me, in which she played Mrs. Carter, a drug-addicted mother. Her most prominent early television role came in the early 1990s series I'll Fly Away, where she played Lilly Harper. That performance earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Drama and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series. She subsequently appeared in a range of films, including the Spike Lee production Clockers, Courage Under Fire, A Family Thing, The Negotiator, Losing Isaiah, and the Showtime original Strange Justice, in which she portrayed Anita Hill. She also starred in the PBS telefilm Cora Unashamed, based on a Langston Hughes short story, and was a cast member across all four seasons of the CBS drama The Unit. In 2018, she appeared as Dr. Hannah Moshay in season five of the NBC series The Blacklist.

On Broadway, Taylor made her first appearance in 1986 and went on to accumulate credits that include As You Like It, Macbeth, Romeo + Juliet, and Drowning Crow. She was the first Black woman to play Juliet in Romeo and Juliet on Broadway. Her stage work also extended to Off-Broadway and regional productions, among them Machinal (Off-Broadway, 1990), L'Illusion (Off-Broadway, 1988), Jar the Floor (Off-Broadway, 1999), and A Map of the World at the Public Theatre. In 1987, she appeared as Ariel in The Tempest at the La Jolla Playhouse in California, a performance that earned her a Dramalogue Award.

As a playwright, Taylor has written and directed numerous works across major regional theaters. Her short plays Watermelon Rinds and Inside the Belly of the Beast were presented at the Goodman Theatre Studio in 1994, followed by Escape from Paradise, a one-woman show produced at the same venue in October 1995. In 1999, the Goodman Theatre produced her play Oo-Bla-Dee, about female jazz musicians of the 1940s, which won a best new play award from the American Critics' Association in 2000. She wrote and appeared in Millennium Mambo, a one-woman work presented at the Goodman Theatre in February 2000, and wrote A Night in Tunisia, which premiered at the 2000 Alabama Shakespeare Festival.

Taylor wrote and directed Crowns, a play with gospel music based on a book of photographs by Michael Cunningham and journalist Craig Marberry. It premiered at the McCarter Theatre in October 2002 and was subsequently produced at the Second Stage Theatre in December 2002. Crowns became the most performed musical in the country in 2006 and won four Helen Hayes Awards, including Taylor's win for Best Direction and the award for Best Regional Musical. She also wrote and directed an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull titled Drowning Crow, which was produced on Broadway in February 2004 by the Manhattan Theatre Club at the Biltmore Theatre, directed by Marion McClinton. Her play The Dreams of Sarah Breedlove, a dramatic work about businesswoman Madam C.J. Walker, received its world premiere at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in January 2005. Magnolia, set during the early period of desegregation in Atlanta in 1963, premiered at the Goodman Theatre in March 2009. Taylor returned to the Goodman in early 2011 for the world premiere of The Trinity River Plays, a trilogy composed of Jar Fly, Rain, and Ghoststory, co-produced with the Dallas Theater Center. Her play stop. reset. premiered at the off-Broadway Pershing Square Signature Center on September 8, 2013, and as of 2022 she holds the position of writer-in-residence at the Signature Theatre. Her 2017 play A Seat at the Table, commissioned by Carthage College's Theatre Department as part of their New Play Initiative, tells the story of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and was invited to the 2018 region 3 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

In July 2017, Taylor was named the Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in Theater at Fordham University. She married artist Mario Emes in 1982 and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. DNA analysis has indicated that she is descended primarily from the Mende people of Sierra Leone and the Kru people of Liberia.