Best Dressed at the Oscars doesn’t always lead to memoir success

I think this is what distinguishes me- what makes me a different kind of actress. I have the gift of being able to see what sometimes neither the creator nor the director can see.

My husband unequivocally loves Taraji P. Henson (when he saw me reading her memoir he exclaimed “Cookie wrote a book!?”) but I can’t saw we really follow her career. We did just see Hidden Figures but it was a let down for me after reading the book last year.  Most of his adoration comes from the brilliant first season of Empire which we stopped watching after the first few episodes of season two.

Taraji P Henson was born in Washington D.C. and raised by a single mother. Taraji was always an energetic, creative soul and she eventually found her niche in the performing arts program at Howard University. She got pregnant her senior year of college and eventually split with her son’s father after a violent altercation.

While single motherhood delayed some of her plans she never gave up her Hollywood dreams. However, her desire to be a good mother meant she didn’t move out to Los Angeles until her mid-twenties. I was surprised to learn how, relatively speaking, old she was when she got her big break. She was 26 years old when she landed her first big role in Baby Boy! 

She talks a lot about race in Hollywood and what it means to be raising a black man in today’s world, especially now that his two most prominent male role models are deceased. She is honest about certain financial realities, like how she took her role on Person of Interest for the steady paycheck and how she received a pittance for her Oscar nominated role in Benjamin Button compared to her costars. She also took shots with Angelina Jolie after she lost at the Academy Awards which is amazing.

 

I think I would have liked this one more if it had a more linear approach. I know, y’all are astonished that I found fault in a book that bounced around its timeline. All in all, Taraji has had an interesting life; while she is a magnetic actress she is not really a writer.