She's got an Oscar nomination, an Emmy nomination, she's performed live at the Oscars and her resume includes working on films with Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, and Alicia Keys - but that is just a glimpse into the sparkle and star appeal of Taraji P. Henson - one of Hollywood's hottest young performers whose sizzle-factor is searing.

Taraji Henson has earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress opposite Brad Pitt in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Taraji is also a 2011 Emmy nominee for Best Actress in a Movie or Miniseries for Lifetime's Taken From Me. For her role in Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself, she received the 2009 Diversity Award for Best Actress. She was named Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Feature Film by the Black Movie Awards and received the BET Best Actress nod for her performance in Hustle & Flow. Taraji currently stars as Detective Joss Carter in Person of Interest for CBS and stars in two films released in 2012, From the Rough and Think Like a Man.

Henson has been a cast member on several television shows, including Lifetime Television's The Division and ABC's Boston Legal for one season. Her recurring appearances in television include the character Angela Scott on ABC's Eli Stone in December 2008. In 2011, Henson was cast in the CBS crime-suspense series Person of Interest.

In 2015 she began starring as Cookie Lyon in the Fox drama series Empire, for which she became the first African-American woman to win a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series. She also won a Golden Globe Award; and was nominated for Emmy Awards in 2015 and 2016.

In 2016, Time named Henson one of the 100 most influential people in the world. That year, she released a New York Times best selling autobiography titled “Around the Way Girl.” Also that year, she was praised for her starring role as Katherine Johnson in the critically acclaimed drama film Hidden Figures, for which she won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

Taraji P. Henderson credits her good fortune to having faith in herself, and as a speaker, this is her resounding theme. Her audiences aren't just starstruck, they are inspired by the person. And Taraji's keynotes motivate people to find that inspiration inside themselves.

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