What You Didn't Know About Regina King

If it seems as if Regina King has been a constant presence on movie and television screens for decades, it's because she has. In fact, as King's IMDb page demonstrates, her Hollywood career extends all the way back to the mid-1980s when she was just a teenager, playing the daughter of Marla Gibbs' character in all five seasons of the sitcom "227." 

More than 30 years later, King's career continues to thrive, thanks to a series of powerful performances that have made her one of Hollywood's most sought-after actors — to say nothing of her 2019 Oscar win for her role in "If Beale Street Could Talk." In fact, that was just one of many amazing portrayals she's delivered over the years, including roles in such acclaimed TV series as "Southland," "American Crime," and "Watchmen," and in films ranging from 1991's "Boyz n the Hood" to the 2022 biopic "Shirley," in which she stars as trailblazing Congresswoman and first Black female presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm. 

King entered 2022 with her career at its absolute peak; sadly, she found herself in the headlines shortly after the start of the year due to an unfathomably painful personal tragedy. To find out more about this incredibly talented Hollywood multi-hyphenate, read all about the untold truth of Regina King.  

There was a time in Regina King's life when she wondered whether her future would involve acting or taking care of other people's teeth. "My desire to be a career actor was not always my desire," she confessed in an interview with Marie Claire. "I thought I was going to be a dentist."

Appearing on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," King explained that by the time she went to college, she'd set her sights on an acting career — not much of a shocker, considering she spent her teenage years on a sitcom. However, she was certainly aware of the pitfalls child actors can experience when trying to transition to adult roles, and saw dentistry as her Plan B. Asked what it was about being a dentist that appealed to her, she replied, "A lot of people, the first thing they see are the eyes. The first thing I see is the smile."

After graduating from college, she told Bustle, the idea of going to dental school "went out the door" when her passion for acting hadn't dissipated during her four years at the University of Southern California. Acting, she explained, "is what I wanted to do, but it took me to go to college to know that." Still, that's not to say that her interest in dentistry evaporated entirely. "Teeth are a big deal to me," she declared. 

Regina King may never have even conceived of a career as an actor had her mother not exposed her to the arts at a very young age. "My mom encouraged us to listen to what our spirits were saying inside and nurture that," King told The Guardian. "Me and my sister [Reina, also an actor] took every class. And Mom took us to see things. If the Dance Theatre of Harlem was playing L.A. or if Eartha Kitt was in town, we would be there. My mom wanted to have us always work that muscle in between our ears."

In fact, a seminal moment in the artistic evolution of the future actor came when she was about seven years old, when she and her family went to watch Eartha Kitt, known for such screen roles as Catwoman in the 1960s "Batman" television series, and roles in various musical productions, including "Timbuktu!" on Broadway. Watching the legendary performer do her thing, King recalled for Marie Claire, was beyond revelatory. "This is everything, I remember thinking. I want to feel like this and make people feel like this," King declared. "I wanted to be part of this feeling over and over again."

Years after Kitt's death, King was able to pay homage to the woman who inspired her all those years ago by recreating Kitt's Life magazine cover for Ebony. 

Regina King famously began her career in television, playing teenage Brenda Jenkins in "227" for the entirety of the sitcom's run from 1985 to 1990. After that, King's first role was in director John Singleton's now-iconic "Boyz n the Hood," complementing that with a role in Singleton's followup, "Poetic Justice," where she appeared alongside Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur. She worked with Singleton again in "Higher Learning" in 1995.

For the remainder of the 1990s, King veered between television and movie roles, but predominantly considered herself a film actor (her credits during the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s include the likes of "Friday," "Jerry Maguire," "How Stella Got Her Groove Back," "Daddy Day Care," Oscar-winning "Ray," and sequels to "Miss Congeniality" and "Legally Blonde," among other works). 

At a certain point, however, King made a strategic shift to embrace television, even as her film career heated up. The reason, she explained in an interview with The New York Times, was because she was finding the scripts better and the characters more challenging in television. "The possibility of telling more reflective stories in film could — or, you thought, would — happen more," she said. "I can't speak for every actor, but when things come across my desk to read, there are more things that are interesting in TV than movies."

Acting wasn't enough to satisfy Regina King's creative urges, pushing her toward a second career behind the camera. Her first directing credit was a 2013 episode of "Southland," the NBC series in which she starred. She followed that up with a TV movie and a documentary before helming multiple episodes of the Gabrielle Union-starring series "Being Mary Jane." "I approached them because I loved the show," she told Entertainment Weekly of how she landed that gig. "When something is good to you, you want to create an opportunity to be part of it." 

More television directing followed, including episodes of "Scandal," "This Is Us," "Shameless," "The Good Doctor," and more. She explained the simple motivation behind her love of directing in an interview with Variety. "It's an opportunity to be more involved in telling the story," she said. "Having a little more control — that might have something to do with it."

Having cut her teeth directing television, in 2019 Deadline reported that King had signed on to direct her first feature, "One Night in Miami," a fictionalized account of a one-night motel-room meeting between singer Sam Cooke, activist Malcolm X, NFL star Jim Brown, and boxer Cassius Clay, before he renamed himself Muhammad Ali. As The Guardian reported, King made history when "One Night in Miami" was selected for inclusion in the prestigious Venice Film Festival, the first film from a Black female director ever chosen for the festival. 

The year 2019 was a particularly big one for Regina King. Having won the best supporting actress Oscar for her performance in "If Beale Street Could Talk," 2019 also marked the debut of HBO's critically acclaimed series "Watchmen." That same year, she embarked on directing her first feature film, "One Night in Miami," which was released on Prime Video in 2020. 

It was also the year that Time named King one of its 100 most influential people, with fellow actor Viola Davis paying tribute in an essay that appeared in the magazine. Recalling the first time she met King, Davis said she felt like "absolute family, right away." Now, she wrote, their mutual success had made them "sisters who know the road; we're on the battlegrounds together as women and women of color."

Lauding King for marshaling the forces to both direct and produce her own projects, Davis explained how "that changes the game: the power of what's on the page is going to change how people of color and women are seen in the business." Davis ended her essay by sharing an old proverb, "what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly." King, she declared, "is morphing into the most beautiful butterfly."

Among Regina King's many memorable roles was Marcee Tidwell, wife of NFL star Rod Tidwell (portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr.) in the 1996 hit "Jerry Maguire," starring Tom Cruise as a jaded sports agent who loses and then regains his mojo. King earned raves for her performance; The Hollywood Reporter, for example, described King as "a standout" in its review.

The film's director, Cameron Crowe, shared his recollection of working with King in a "besotted" email he sent to The New York Times. "Tom Cruise would often watch her scenes off camera, and grab my arm, as in — there it is, there's your movie," Crowe wrote.

"When Tom and Renée [Zellweger] awkwardly watch the true love of Regina and Cuba's movie-marriage, it's one of my favorite scenes in the movie," Crowed added. "That's the moment when Jerry Maguire realizes this is the emptiness in his life." Crowe called King's onscreen relationship with Cuba Gooding Jr. the real "prize of the movie," which takes precedence over the "show me the money" contract that Cruise's Maguire is trying to land for his client. It's not until Jerry comes to that precise realization, Crowe added, that "the movie is complete."

Regina King won her first Oscar in 2019, but that's far from the only statue she's been presented with in the course of her illustrious career. She's also been honored for her television work, winning four Emmys (one in 2020 for "Watchmen," another in 2018 for Netflix movie "Seven Seconds," and back-to-back wins for her roles in "American Crime" in 2015 and 2016). In addition, she also nabbed a 2019 Golden Globe for "If Beale Street Could Talk."

Meanwhile, other awards she's won include several BET awards, seven Black Reel awards, Critics Choice awards in both the film and television categories, a pair of Independent Spirit awards, three Peabody awards, a handful of NAACP Image awards, and a Gotham award, among others.  

Despite all those statues — about 80 in total — King told The Guardian that winning awards was never her goal. "Honestly, I was never an actress because I wanted to win awards," she insisted. "Or ever looking to be the first Black woman to win this or that. I just love the electricity when a performance feels special. Not every performance feels like that, but I have been lucky to have a few. You will always find energy for that."

In addition to appearing both in front of and behind the camera, on occasion, Regina King has relied solely on her voice to portray a character. Such was the case when she signed on to the 2006 animated feature "The Ant Bully," voicing an ant named Kreela who works to defend her colony from an exterminator. She's also voiced a truck named Dynamite in Pixar's 2014 animated film "Planes: Fire and Rescue."

However, King's best-known voice work is in the animated TV series "The Boondocks," adapted from Aaron McGruder's comic strip. King provided the voices of both Freeman siblings, Huey and Riley. "She's astounding," said McGruder of King in a behind-the-scenes interview. "She does this amazing thing where she goes back and forth between the voices and, you know, she's the only one who could possibly pull that off."

Discussing fan-favorite character Riley, King described him as being "just so simple. Basically, if you watch TV in any type of pop, urban culture, there's Riley." While the original series ran from 2005 until 2014, a revival had been planned for streaming service HBO Max. However, "The Boondocks" actor Cedric Yarbrough confirmed in a 2022 interview on the "Geekset Podcast" that the highly anticipated revival wouldn't be moving forward, revealing that the studio behind the project had chosen to "pull the plug."

There's no bigger reminder that actors have made it in Hollywood than when they receive their own stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. However, an even more exclusive honor is an invitation to imprint one's hands and feet in cement outside Hollywood's iconic TCL Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. King immortalized herself in cement in fall 2021, joining the elite ranks of such legendary Hollywood icons as Marilyn Monroe, Sidney Poitier, Humphrey Bogart, Julie Andrews, and Jimmy Stewart.

"I'm born and bred in L.A., when we got to see a film at the Chinese Theatre it was always an event because we could put our hands and feet on the prints of the movie stars," she told Variety ahead of the ceremony. "I always wondered, was it hard to decide what shoe to wear? Who would have thunk I would answer my own question 40 years late ... yep! It is difficult to decide. I'm struggling between a pump and sneaker right now."

As Essence reported, she wound up opting for a pair of "nude strappy stiletto sandals" for the event, which was attended by actor Logan Browning ("Dear White People"), producer/director Ava DuVernay, and members of King's family. Referencing the fact that she was born and raised in Los Angeles, accompanying her handprints and footprints was the "Wizard of Oz"-inspired message, "No place like home."

Regina King's successful Hollywood career was not built on talent alone, but also on her relentless drive, and an overarching philosophy that has served her well. As King explained in an interview with Marie Claire, she refuses to live in the past, choosing instead to live in the moment while remaining open to embrace whatever the future holds. 

"What's next, you know? I'm very good at choosing what needs to stay with me and what things need to be let go of," she said. "Sometimes we can get so caught up in the moment and we don't ever leave that moment, and that's how some people get stuck." King warned that without pushing boundaries, true growth will never occur. "I don't know if you ever heard me say, 'Comfort zones are where dreams go to die,'" she said.

In that same interview, she also acknowledged that adversity is part of life, not just in business, but in choices to speak up and work for positive change. "Turn the other cheek? I don't quite believe that," King declared. "I do believe that sometimes you're supposed to turn the other cheek, sometimes they're supposed to get smacked back, sometimes they're supposed to get knocked the f**k out, you know? And taking that moment to assess the situation will help you."

Regina King's growth as a director coincided with her interest in producing, eventually attaining the clout to both produce and direct projects that ignited her passion. Such was the case with "One Night in Miami." She told The New York Times that she committed herself to telling the story after reading the play upon which her movie is based. "The film is a quiet film, but it's loud as far as the subject matter."

In "One Night in Miami," that subject matter involves race, a thorny issue if ever there was one — and one that King is eager to tackle. As she explained, "this subject has been present for Black people ever since our history in America has existed."

King is also quick to point out that creating thought-provoking content for Black audiences is complex and nuanced. "We're not a monolith. We are quirky people. We can be the athlete and the nerd; we can be the athlete or the nerd," she told Vanity Fair. "I just have a desire to tell stories that speak to me, you know. Even if it's a fantastical story. I still feel like the story has to have some bit of heart in it in order to draw people in and keep people there."

Regina King has been a working actor since her teens, back when she had a role on the beloved sitcom "227." She reminisced on that time with Vanity Fair, calling her TV mom, Marla Gibbs, "the original boss." King explained, "Before it was a thing to be the actor, the producer, the creator of something, Marla Gibbs was doing it in the '80s. I had the opportunity to soak in so much information, so much 'bossladyness' at a young age." 

Employed steadily throughout the years that followed, King has managed to set aside a few bucks — approximately 16 million of them, according to Celebrity Net Worth. One way that King has managed to amass those millions has been by being smart about debt. "My favorite cash tip would be from my mother: to pay my credit card off at the end of every month," King explained in an interview with Glamour. "Don't let it roll over!"

The monetary cushion that King has compiled has given her enough financial freedom to pick and choose, taking on jobs based on her interest and not on the payday. The whole point of having that kind of money, she told Rolling Stone, isn't about maintaining an extravagant lifestyle; it's "so you don't have to deal with the bulls**t. And you should always put yourself in a position to not have to deal with the bulls**t, because you earned it. You worked for it."

Regina King joined the cast of Netflix's "The Harder They Fall," a gritty 2021 Western featuring a predominantly Black cast. The film's director, Jeymes Samuel, knew he wanted King for the role of gunslinger "Treacherous" Trudy Smith, but there was a big obstacle standing in the way: King had no interest in doing a Western, a genre she'd never particularly enjoyed. 

"I read it and in my mind, I'm like, 'Okay, it's great that this is going to be a Black cast. That's awesome. But you know, what's going to set it apart?'" said King in an interview with the Toronto Star. "My agent Lorrie Bartlett was like, 'This guy Jeymes ... there's really something special about him' ... So I'm like, 'Okay, let's meet someone about a Western. I don't like Westerns, Lorrie!'" 

It wasn't until she spoke to Samuel, who walked her through the entire film — even playing her the music he'd written for the soundtrack on guitar — that she opened her mind to the idea. "So all of a sudden, by the end of the call, I'm like, 'Maybe I do like Westerns,'" she recalled. For his part, Jeymes Samuel was beyond thrilled to cast Regina King in his film. He wrote for the Los Angeles Times, "I was always excited about this movie, but with Regina King in it? I. Could. Not. Wait. To. Start. Shooting."

The world of Regina King came crashing down in January 2022, when People was among the many outlets to report that her only son, Ian Alexander Jr., had died. According to a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Coroner, his death was ruled to be a suicide. Just a few days earlier, he had marked his 26th birthday.

"Our family is devastated at the deepest level by the loss of Ian," King said in a statement. "He is such a bright light who cared so deeply about the happiness of others. Our family asks for respectful consideration during this private time. Thank you."

Fans of King were likely familiar with her son — whom she shared with ex-husband Ian Alexander Sr. — from his role as her companion on numerous red carpets over the years. "She's just a super mom," he told E! News at one of those events. "She doesn't really let bad work days or anything come back and ruin the time that we have. It's really awesome to have a mother I can enjoy spending time with." During the same interview, King gushed about "this young man" who made her "happier than anything in the whole world."

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.