Jada Pinkett Smith

Jada Koren Pinkett Smith (née Pinkett; born September 18, 1971) is an American actress, businesswoman, and talk show host. She is co-host of the Facebook Watch talk show Red Table Talk, for which she has won a Daytime Emmy Award. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021.

Pinkett Smith landed her big break on the sitcom A Different World in 1991. She then starred in films such as Menace II Society (1993), The Nutty Professor (1996), Set It Off (1996), and Scream 2 (1997) before her prominent contributions to The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Matrix Revolutions (2003), and the animated Madagascar films. She returned to television with starring roles on Hawthorne (2009–2011) and Gotham (2014–2017). Her other acting roles include Magic Mike XXL (2015), Bad Moms (2016), Girls Trip (2017), and The Matrix Resurrections (2021).

In the 2000s, Pinkett Smith was the lead vocalist of the nu metal band Wicked Wisdom. In 2005, she published a children's book, Girls Hold Up This World, which landed at number two on The New York Times Best Seller list. With her husband Will Smith, she founded the company Westbrook in 2009, through which she has produced various media. In 2010, she earned a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Musical as a producer for the Broadway musical Fela!.

Early life and education

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Jada Koren Pinkett was named after her mother's favorite soap opera actress, Jada Rowland. She is of Jamaican and Bajan descent on her mother's side and African-American descent on her father's side. Her parents are Adrienne Banfield-Norris, the head nurse of a Baltimore inner-city clinic, and Robsol Pinkett Jr., who ran a construction company. Banfield-Norris became pregnant in high school, and the couple married but divorced after several months.

Pinkett was raised by her mother and grandmother, Marion Martin Banfield, a Jamaican-born social worker who was married to Gilbert Banfield, a family medicine physician. "My grandmother was a doer who wanted to create a better community and add beauty to the world," she said. Banfield noticed her granddaughter's passion for the performing arts and enrolled her in piano, tap dance, and ballet lessons.

During elementary school, Pinkett got to know Josh Charles. She also participated in TWIGs ("To Work In Gaining Skills"), a free after-school program for 2nd-8th grade Baltimore City children offered by the Baltimore School for the Arts. The program is competitive; students must audition and only a few hundred are accepted each year. TWIGs is also often a stepping stone for additional arts training; about half of the entering class of Baltimore School for the Arts are TWIGs alumni.

Pinkett attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, where she studied acting and dance. While at BSA, she met and became close friends with classmate and rapper Tupac Shakur. She also reunited with her friend, Josh Charles. Pinkett graduated in 1989. Pinkett has admitted she was not the best student in high school, and frequently showed up late. Pinkett has remained an active alumnus of BSA.

She was raised in the Pimlico/Arlington neighborhood in a home on Price Avenue. Growing up, she hung out in the neighborhoods of Coldspring and Dolfield. As a teen, she went to clubs including Cignel, Odell's Nightclub, and Godfrey's Famous Ballroom. She has also publicly admitted selling drugs in the Cherry Hill neighborhood. After graduation from BSA, Pinkett spent a year at the North Carolina School of the Arts. She was a drama major.

Film and television career

Early career (1990–1995)

Pinkett began her acting career in 1990, when she starred in an episode of True Colors. She received guest roles in television shows such as Doogie Howser, M.D. (1991) and 21 Jump Street (1991), and earned a role on comedian Bill Cosby's NBC television sitcom A Different World in 1991, as college freshman Lena James.

The role on A Different World proved to be a pivotal career break. Pinkett joined the cast in its fourth season when it was already a hit show and stayed on the show until its final season. Like Pinkett, the character of Lena James was from a poor area of Baltimore. The character originally was a fish out of water; as a freshman she explained, "I really miss my homeboys. They're not like these Hillman brothers, all self-involved and afraid to sweat." The character of Lena James adapts and as a sophomore, when her Baltimore friends visit, she finds herself stuck between the world where she was raised and the world she was now in at Hillman. Lena James enters Hillman as an engineering major, but discovers her talent for writing and switches to journalism.

In 1993, Pinkett appeared in her first film, Menace II Society. A recommendation from her friend Tupac Shakur got her cast as single mother Ronnie. Shakur was also set to appear in the film before he was fired. Pinkett considered dropping out of the film after Shakur's departure but he convinced her to keep the role.

In 1994, Pinkett acted with Keenen Ivory Wayans in the action and comedy film A Low Down Dirty Shame. She described her character Peaches as "raw" with "major attitude", and her acting garnered positive reviews. The New York Times wrote, "Ms. Pinkett, whose performance is as sassy and sizzling as a Salt-N-Pepa recording, walks away with the movie." In 1994, she also starred as a title character in Doug McHenry's romantic drama Jason's Lyric, opposite Allen Payne. In his positive review of the film, Roger Ebert wrote, "[Payne] has powerful chemistry with the enigmatic, teasing, tender character played by Pinkett; they really seem to like one another, which is not a feeling you always pick up in screen romances." That year, she also had a role in the romantic comedy-drama The Inkwell.

In 1995, Pinkett played a convict on work release in the horror film Demon Knight. According to Larenz Tate, Pinkett was set to appear in the film Dead Presidents (1995), but she turned down the role of Delilah due to her loyalty to Shakur. The Hughes brothers directed the film and they had fired Shakur from Menace II Society.

Pinkett also began directing music videos in 1995. She directed the music video "I'm Going Down" by girl group Y? N-Vee. She also directed the music video "How Many Times" by Gerald Levert and appeared in the video. "It was reported that Pinkett would direct the music video for Shakur's song "Can U Get Away" but another single was released instead. Pinkett came up with the concept for his "California Love" music video which she had intended to direct, but she removed herself from the project.

Rise to prominence (1996–2002)

Pinkett starred with actor and comedian Eddie Murphy in the 1996 remake of The Nutty Professor, portraying the love interest of a morbidly-obese, kindhearted university professor. The film was a commercial success, earning $25 million in its first weekend in North America and eventually $274 million worldwide. She also had a lead role in Set It Off (1996), a crime drama about four women who rob banks to escape from poverty, opposite Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox, and Kimberly Elise. Her acting in the film was noted in the San Francisco Chronicle, which wrote that she was "the one to watch". Budgeted at $9 million, Set It Off made $41 million globally. Pinkett also directed the music video "Keep On, Keepin' On" by MC Lyte Feat. Xscape.

In 1997, Pinkett had a cameo role in Scream 2 as a college student who is brutally murdered in front of hundreds of filmgoers. The film made more than $100 million at the North American box office. In 1998, she played a news reporter in the thriller Return to Paradise, with Joaquin Phoenix and Vince Vaughn, and took on the title role of an extroverted woman, alongside Tommy Davidson, in the comedy Woo. While favorably reviewing her performance in Woo, Derek Armstrong of AllMovie wrote that the script was "formulaic" and "not much of a vehicle for its impish starlet". She next starred in Spike Lee's film Bamboozled (2000) as a personal assistant to the main character, played by Damon Wayans. Although the film met with mediocre reviews, it won the National Board of Review's Freedom of Expression Award.

In 2001, Pinkett Smith portrayed a loud-mouthed wife in the moderately successful comedy Kingdom Come, with LL Cool J, Vivica A. Fox, Anthony Anderson, Toni Braxton, and Whoopi Goldberg. In the biographical sports drama Ali (2001), she played Sonji Roi, the first wife of boxer Muhammad Ali, opposite Will Smith. While she loved the final product, she initially did not think she was the right person for the role: "I felt like because we were a couple off screen, for people to see us together on the screen in a movie like this, would take people out of the movie, that people would see Will and Jada there—they wouldn't see Ali and Sonji".