Actress Regina King is known for her role as Sharon Rivers in the film If Beale Street Could Talk. King won the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for the role. She then went on to win a Primetime Emmy Award, her fourth, for her role as Sister Night a.k.a Angela Abar in the HBO series Watchmen.
King has since gone on to be a producer and has also been the director of several episodes of TV and made her feature film debut with One Night in Miami. The film was nominated for the Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Song. The actress mentioned how Hollywood gave her the power to tell marginalized stories not just as an actor, but also as a producer and director.
Regina King’s Career And Life
Regina King has been active in the industry since the ‘80s, having starred in the TV show 227. The actress shot to fame through her roles in films such as Friday, Boyz n The Hood, Poetic Justice, and more. She had her first mainstream role in Tony Scott’s Enemy of the State, for which she was nominated for the NAACP Image Awards.
King had a prolific career in the TV industry as she was cast in a variety of roles in shows such as The Big Bang Theory, 24, Shameless, The Strain, American Crime, and more. She directed episodes of TV shows such as Being Mary Jane, Scandal, This Is Us, and more. Regina King, however, received many accolades for her role as Sharon Rivers in If Beale Street Could Talk.
The actress won the Golden Globe and the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for the film, which was directed by Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins. The actress reportedly took the stage at the Golden Globes to remind people of the power they had as Black Americans and spoke about her dreams and aspirations as a producer in the industry. She said,
“I’m going to use my platform right now to say, in the next two years, everything that I produce, I am making a vow—and it’s going to be tough—to make sure that everything that I produce, that it’s 50% women. I just challenge anyone out there who is in a position of power—not just in our industry, in all industries—I challenge you to challenge yourselves and stand with us in solidarity and do the same.”
Regina King turned producer with the TV show Slay and also made her directorial debut with the Oscar-nominated drama One Night in Miami. The film was reportedly an Oscar favorite, although it only got nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Original Song, and Best Supporting Actor.
Regina King Mentioned The Power She Had In The Industry
Actress Regina King has been one of the most prolific actors in the industry as she has increasingly taken up projects that speak to the cause of reclaiming power for the marginalized. She starred in a political reimagining of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel Watchmen and won her fourth Primetime Emmy Award for the role.
She has been an actress, a producer, and a director, having worked on several episodes of multiple TV shows. King recently starred in Shirley, a biopic based on Shirley Chisolm, the first Black woman to be elected to the United States Congress. The actress mentioned to Glamour magazine how she realized the power she wields as an industry veteran.
She mentioned how it took her a long time to realize that power and how to use it in the industry to further her ambitions. She said,
“There are moments where I feel like when I can look back in life and definitely see that maybe I have more power than I thought I had, and because I didn’t know, I didn’t access it. I didn’t allow myself to utilize it, because I just did not realize it.”
Though she mentioned that there was no particular moment where she instantly knew about her strengths, just that she gained the wisdom to be in tune with that power in due time.
