Actor & Director

LaTanya Richardson
Jackson

LaTanya Richardson Jackson is a three-time Tony Award–nominated stage and screen actress, director, and producer. She recently starred on Broadway in Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Purpose, for which she received Tony, Drama League, and Outer Critics Circle nominations, and was honored with Black Women on Broadway’s 2025 Audra McDonald Legacy Award. Her previous Broadway credits include A Raisin in the Sun (Tony and Drama League nomination), To Kill a Mockingbird (Lilly Award), and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, plus Shakespeare in the Park’s The Taming of the Shrew, for colored girls…, and August Wilson’s Century Cycle, among many. As a theater creative, she made history as the first woman to direct an August Wilson play on Broadway with the Tony–nominated 2022 revival of The Piano Lesson and co-produced the 2023 revival of Purlie Victorious (Tony nomination). For her decades-long dedication to the theater, she was honored with the NAACP Theater Award’s 2016 Trailblazer Award. Her screen credits include Show Me A Hero (NAACP Image Award nomination), Grey’s Anatomy, Luke Cage, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, Sidney Lumet’s 100 Centre Street, and the films Freedomland, Losing Isaiah, The Fighting Temptations, U.S. Marshals, Mother and Child, and You Hurt My Feelings. She also executive produced Apple TV’s The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, EPIX’s Enslaved, and the upcoming Paramount+ series Frisco King. She is a graduate of Spelman College, where she and her husband recently opened the LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Samuel L. Jackson Performing Arts Center. In recognition of her career achievements, support of the arts, and her relentless civic engagement, she has been named a 2026 ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood distinguished honoree.