Terrence Howard Age, Height, Partner & Biography

Terrence Howard is an American actor known for powerful performances in Hustle & Flow, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and as Lucious Lyon in the television series Empire. Born on March 11, 1969, in Chicago, Illinois, Howard, 57, has built a career that moves between independent film, blockbusters and television.

Quick Facts

Who Is Terrence Howard?

Terrence Howard is an actor who brings intensity and intelligence to his roles. He first reached a wide audience as Djay, a Memphis pimp who dreams of becoming a rapper, in Hustle & Flow (2005), a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and showed his ability to make an audience care about a man who is, on the surface, unsympathetic. He played Djay as a man who is tired, angry and, in the end, hopeful, and the performance is often cited as one of the great performances in American independent film.

Beyond Hustle & Flow, Howard has shown a wide range. He played James Rhodes, the Air Force officer who becomes War Machine, in Iron Man (2008), a role that introduced him to a new generation of Marvel fans, and he played Cameron Thayer, a television director, in Paul Haggis’s Crash (2004), a film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. He is best known to a television audience as Lucious Lyon, the hip-hop mogul, in Empire (2015-2020), a role that brought him a Golden Globe nomination and showed his ability to play a man who is both charming and ruthless. He is also a singer and a musician, and he has released music and performed on stage.

Early Life & Background

Terrence Dashon Howard was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Tyrone Howard and Anita Williams. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended school and became interested in acting as a teenager. He studied chemical engineering at the Pratt Institute in New York, where he first became interested in acting, and he later moved to Los Angeles, where he worked on stage and in small film and television roles. He made his acting debut on television, playing in the series The Jacksons: An American Dream (1992) and in Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995), in which he played Louis Russ, a student.

He worked in Dead Presidents (1995), in which he played Cowboy, a Vietnam veteran, in Best Man (1999), in which he played Quentin, a college friend, and in Crash, which brought him to wide attention. He has said that his background in science and in engineering taught him discipline and a respect for detail, and that it gave him a different perspective on acting, one that is grounded in logic and in a search for truth.

Career

Howard’s career in film includes Hustle & Flow, Iron Man, Crash, Four Brothers (2005), Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2005), Idlewild (2006), The Brave One (2007), The Best Man Holiday (2013) and Empire. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Hustle & Flow, and he has been nominated for the Golden Globe for Empire and for Hustle & Flow.

In recent years, Howard has worked in Empire, in Terminator Salvation (2009), in The Best Man: The Final Chapters (2022), a series in which he returned as Quentin, and in Shirley (2024), a film in which he played Arthur St. John, a lawyer. He has spoken publicly about his interest in science and in mathematics, and about his belief that he has found a new theory of physics, a claim that has been met with scepticism by scientists. He is known for his intensity, for his talent as an actor and as a musician, and for a career that has lasted for more than thirty years.

Facts About Terrence Howard

• He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Hustle & Flow in 2006.
• He played Lucious Lyon in the series Empire (2015-2020).
• He played James Rhodes in Iron Man (2008), a role later played by Don Cheadle.
• He studied chemical engineering at the Pratt Institute in New York before becoming an actor.
• He is also a singer and a musician, and has released music and performed on stage.

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