Terrence Howard

Terrence Dashon Howard is an American actor born in Chicago, Illinois, on March 11, 1969, to Tyrone and Anita Howard, both of African and English ancestry. His great-grandmother was actress Minnie Gentry. Howard was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, where he experienced a difficult childhood that included physical abuse from his father and witnessing his father stab another man in what became known as the Santa Line Slaying when Howard was two years old. His father was convicted of manslaughter and served eleven months in jail, after which his parents divorced. Howard was subsequently raised by his great-grandmother, who died at age 77 in 1993.

Howard entered the entertainment industry in the early 1990s, appearing in a minor role in the 1993 buddy comedy Who's the Man? and portraying Jackie Jackson in the television production The Jacksons: An American Dream that same year. He followed those appearances with minor roles in Mr. Holland's Opus and Dead Presidents in 1995, and also played Al Cowlings in The O. J. Simpson Story that year. During the late 1990s, he co-starred as Greg Sparks in the short-lived television series Sparks alongside James L. Avery Sr. and Miguel A. Nunez Jr., and appeared in the 1999 film The Best Man as Quentin Spivey, a role he reprised in The Best Man Holiday in 2013 and the miniseries The Best Man: The Final Chapters in 2022. He also made guest appearances on Family Matters and Moesha during this period.

Howard's profile rose considerably in 2005 when he portrayed a pimp and aspiring rapper in Hustle & Flow, performing all of the character's musical tracks, including "It's Hard out Here for a Pimp," which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 78th Academy Awards. His performance earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. That same year, he won an NAACP Image Award for his work in Lackawanna Blues. He also portrayed Cassius Clay in the 2000 television film King of the World and Ralph Abernathy in the 2001 television film Boycott. In 2007, Howard received a producer credit on the film Pride, and in 2008 he hosted the PBS series Independent Lens.

Howard was cast as Colonel James Rhodes in the 2008 Marvel Cinematic Universe film Iron Man, for which he was signed before the other major cast members and was the highest-paid actor in the production. He was subsequently replaced by Don Cheadle in the film's sequels, with Entertainment Weekly reporting that Howard had been offered a pay cut of between fifty and eighty percent for Iron Man 2. Also in 2008, Howard released his debut album, Shine Through It, on Columbia/SME Records, describing it as urban country and having written or co-written every track on it.

Howard made his Broadway debut in 2008, playing Brick in an all-African-American revival of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Debbie Allen. During rehearsals, musical composer Tex Allen alleged that Howard attacked and seriously injured him; Allen filed a five-million-dollar lawsuit against Howard in October 2008. In 2010, Howard joined the cast of Law & Order: Los Angeles, playing Deputy District Attorney Joe Dekker, alternating episodes with Alfred Molina, who portrayed Deputy District Attorney Ricardo Morales. The series was cancelled after one season. The following year, Howard played Nelson Mandela in the film Winnie Mandela.

From 2015 to 2020, Howard starred as Lucious Lyon, a hip-hop mogul confronting a terminal illness while fighting to secure his music empire, in the Fox musical drama series Empire. Concurrently, he appeared in the first season of Wayward Pines in 2015 as Sheriff Arnold Pope, a main character, returning as a guest in the series' second and final season. Howard received a Screen Actors Guild Award as well as nominations for a Golden Globe Award and two Independent Spirit Awards across his career.

In December 2022, Howard stated that he had retired from acting for the most part, though he subsequently appeared in additional film and television projects, including the announced British science-fiction thriller Beneath and the horror film Skeletons in the Closet. Howard has been married four times to three women and has five children and two grandchildren. As of 2007, he resided outside Philadelphia in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania.