Golden Globe

Oscar-Winning Screenwriter

b. October 17, 1980

“It’s really important for us, in terms of the storytellers, to be able to talk about these intimate details that built our lives.”

Tarell Alvin McCraney is an award-winning playwright and an actor. In 2017 he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for “Moonlight,” a film based on his autobiographical play, “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue.”

McCraney was born in the tough Liberty City section of Miami, Florida, to a teenage mother who struggled with crack addiction. He survived with the help of a kind-hearted drug dealer and his grandparents, who encouraged learning and offered a vision of life outside his crime-infested neighborhood.   

McCraney attended Miami’s New World School of the Arts and was accepted into the Theatre School at DePaul University, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting. At age 24, he enrolled in the playwriting program at Yale School of Drama. Upon graduation he received the prestigious Cole Porter playwriting award. 

At Yale, McCraney wrote his first famous play, “The Brothers Size.” It opened off Broadway in 2007, when he was a third-year student. The New York Times reviewed it enthusiastically.

“The Brothers Size,” and two other plays he wrote in drama school, “In The Red and Brown Water” and “Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet,” make up McCraney’s acclaimed trilogy, “The Brother/Sister Plays.” Set in the Louisiana bayou and drawing upon West African Lore, “The Brother/Sister Plays” distinguished McCraney as a gifted new artist. The trilogy was performed in repertory in the United States and worldwide.

From 2009 to 2011, McCraney served as the Warwick International Playwright in Residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. In 2010 he became a member of the celebrated Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago. He also performed with the Northlight Theatre and co-starred in the Chicago premiere of “Blue/Orange.” 

In 2013 McCraney received a $625,000 MacArthur Fellowship, known as the “genius grant.” The MacArthur Foundation presents the coveted prize annually to 24 “extraordinarily talented and creative individuals.” 

With the director Barry Jenkins, McCraney co-wrote the screenplay for the 2016 film “Moonlight,” which draws on his experience growing up black and gay in a Miami housing project. The film won three Academy Awards, including  Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for best picture, and dozens of other awards and nominations.
 
Among other honors, McCraney has received London's Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright, The New York Times’ inaugural Outstanding Playwright Award and the renowned Whiting Award. The Advocate named him to its list of “40 under 40” and Out magazine featured him on its “Out100” list.

McCraney is the Chair and Eugene O’Neill Professor in the Practice of Playwriting at Yale University School of Drama and the Playwright-in-Residence of the Yale Repertory Theatre. 

Entertainer  

b. March 18, 1970 

“You have to believe in your ideas and fight for it.”

Known as "Hip-Hop’s First Lady," Queen Latifah is an acclaimed entertainer in music, film and television. She has received a Grammy, a Golden Globe and two Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards. 

Born Dana Elaine Owens in Newark, New Jersey, she was raised in the Baptist faith and attended Catholic school. At age 8, a Muslim cousin gave her the nickname Latifah, an Arabic word meaning “delicate and sensitive.” In high school, Latifah was a star basketball player and with friends formed a rap group called Ladies Fresh. 

At 18, a demo recording of Latifah’s rap song “Princess of the Posse” landed her a recording contract with Tommy Boy Music. In 1989, her debut album, “All Hail to the Queen,” was released and went platinum. She has recorded seven albums, including a collection of soul music and jazz standards titled “The Dana Owens Album.” In 1991, she founded and became CEO of Flavor Unit Records. Three years later, she earned a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rap Performance for “U.N.I.T.Y.” 

Her acting career launched on television in the 1990s with a starring role on the sitcom “Living Single.” She then appeared in a series of successful films, including “Set it Off” (1996), “Living Out Loud (1998) and “The Bone Collector” (1999). 

Her breakout role came in the Oscar-winning film version of the musical “Chicago” (2002), playing the part of Matron “Mama” Morton. For her performance, Latifah received a SAG Award for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for an Academy Award, making her the first female hip-hop artist to receive an Oscar nod. 

Latifah’s subsequent film appearances include the box office hits “Bringing Down the House” (2003) and “Hairspray” (2006). For her portrayal of an HIV-positive woman in the HBO film “Life Support” (2007), she won a Golden Globe and her second SAG Award. 

Queen Latifah received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A new syndicated talk show, “The Queen Latifah Show,” premiered in September 2013. 

Actor

b. November 19, 1962

“It was the job I was born into. I didn't have an actor's personality, it's just what I did.”

Jodie Foster is a celebrated actor, director and producer. She has received two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Foster was born in Los Angeles, the youngest child of a film producer and an Air Force officer. Her parents divorced before she was born. Foster’s career began at age 3 in a Coppertone commercial. As a child, she appeared in dozens of commercials and television series, including as a co-star in “Paper Moon.”

Her breakout role was as a teenage prostitute in “Taxi Driver” (1976), for which she received an Academy Award nomination. In 1980, Foster enrolled at Yale University. She graduated magna cum laude with a degree in literature. While at Yale, she was stalked by John Hinckley, an obsessed fan who shot President Reagan and said he did so to impress her.

Foster won her first Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for her role in “The Accused” (1988). She earned her second Oscar and another Golden Globe Award for “Silence of the Lambs” (1991), her first blockbuster film. That same year, she made her directorial debut with “Little Man Tate,” in which she co-starred. In 1995, she directed “Home for the Holidays.”

Foster has appeared in more than 40 films, including “Maverick” (1994), “Nell” (1994), “Contact” (1997), “The Panic Room” (2002), “Inside Man” (2006) and “The Brave One” (2007).

In 2007, while accepting an award at a Hollywood Reporter “Women in Entertainment” event, she acknowledged her then long-term partner, producer Cydney Bernard, with the words, “to my beautiful Cydney, who sticks with me through the rotten and the bliss.”

That same year, Foster gave The Trevor Project its largest donation. Foster lives in Beverly Hills with her two sons.

Ian McKellen is one of the world's most highly-regarded actors. Since the late 1980's, he has been an activist for gay rights.

b. May 25, 1939

"Try and understand what part you have to play in the world in which you live. … Discover what part you can play and then go for it."

Ian McKellen is best known for his movie roles as the wizard Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as Magneto in the X-Men films, and in the title role in Richard III.He has made more than 40 other features films over five decades. For much of his career he was primarily known for his work in London and New York theatre and as a preeminent Shakespearean actor.McKellen's acting has been recognized by more than 40 major international acting awards, including two Academy Award nominations, a Tony Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cable ACE Award, a Golden Globe Award, and most recently, a Lifetime Achievement Golden Bear from the 2006 Berlin Film Festival.

His legendary performances as Shakespeare's "Richard II" and Marlowe's "Edward II" stormed the 1969 Edinburgh Festival. As leading man for the Royal Shakespeare Company, he played Macbeth opposite Dame Judi Dench, as well as Romeo, Iago, and Toby Belch, and performed in plays by Brecht, Chekhov, Ibsen, Jonson, Shaw, and Stoppard.

On Broadway he was Saliere in "Amadeus" and most recently, the captain in Strindberg's "Dance of Death." Last year he achieved two long-time ambitions: a visiting role in the soap opera "Coronation Street" and a turn as Widow Twankey, the dame role in "Aladdin" at the Old Vic Theatre in London, where he lives.

He was knighted for services to the performing arts in the Queen's New Year Honours of 1990.

In 1988 McKellen he announced on BBC radio that he was gay, debating the UK government's "Section 28" legislation that criminalized the "promotion of homosexuality."

Since 1994, McKellen has performed a one-man show, "A Knight Out," about his parallel journeys as an actor and a gay man. The Los Angeles Times called the show "a moving and witty assessment of the conflict between our public and private selves."

McKellen will return to the Stratford stage in March 2007 in the role of King Lear, in the final production for the Royal Shakespeare Company's Complete Works Festival, followed by a world tour.

Actor

b. July 14, 1960

"As for being out in Hollywood—I never thought about it. I never hid who I was."

Jane Lynch is an award-winning theater, film and television actor. In 2010, she shared a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Comedy Ensemble for the hit television series “Glee.” She also received a Golden Globe nomination and won an Emmy for her role on the show.

Lynch grew up in Dolton, Illinois, outside Chicago. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Theater from Illinois State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Theater from Cornell.

Lynch began her career on stage with the Second City comedy troupe, followed by a stint playing Carol Brady in the touring company of "The Real Live Brady Bunch." In 1998, Lynch wrote and starred in "Oh Sister, My Sister." Six years later, Lynch’s play helped launch the Lesbians in Theater program at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.

After playing bit parts and acting in commercials, Lynch caught the attention of film director Christopher Guest, who spotted her in a Frosted Flakes commercial and cast her in "Best in Show." Lynch’s turn as a lesbian dog handler in the movie was her breakout role. She has appeared in more than 50 films, including "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Julie and Julia," "Alvin and the Chipmunks," "Talladega Nights" and "The Fugitive."

On television, Lynch guest starred on dozens of series, including "Judging Amy," "The West Wing," "Arrested Development" and "Boston Legal." She played recurring characters on "The L Word," "Party Down," "Two and a Half Men" and "Criminal Minds."

As Sue Sylvester, the "Glee" cheerleading coach described as "pure evil," Lynch is receiving rave reviews. Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Lynch alone makes 'Glee' worth watching."

In 2005, Jane Lynch was named one of the "10 Amazing Gay Women in Showbiz" by the Professional Organization of Women in Entertainment Reaching Up (POWER UP). In 2010, Outfest, the Los Angeles gay and lesbian film festival, honored Lynch with the 14th annual Achievement Award for her contributions to LGBT film and media.