Taraji P. Henson
on the hustle and flow of hollywood and acting beyond her years
2008-12-11
By Sergio A. Mims

People may have taken notice of Washington D.C. native Taraji P. Henson in her role in 2005’s Hustle and Flow, but she’s an acting veteran in dozens of television and film roles since the late 90’s including CSI, House, Boston Legal, Something New and The Family That Preys.

She's about to make a bigger impact with her major role in the highly anticipated fantasy film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in which she plays the adoptive mother of Button, played by Brad Pitt, who is born old and gets younger as everyone around him grows older. In January she follows up with her lead role alongside Morris Chestnut in Not Easily Broken, based on the T.D. Jakes novel about a couple trying to save a troubled marriage.  Recently Henson sat down to talk to EbonyJet.com about her new films, her approach to acting and a thing or two about those celebrity gossip blogs.

EBONY: The buzz among Hollywood insiders for the past few months is that you’re a sure bet for an Oscar nomination for your performance in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Can you sleep at night?

HENSON: I feel honored but, you know, I just want to leave that alone. I’ll just leave that up to the stars (laughs).

The director of Button, David Fincher (Zodiac, Fight Club, Se7en, Panic Room) has a well known reputation for being a difficult, extremely demanding director. He’s known to do 50 or 60 takes of a scene until he gets what he wants. What was the experience like working for him?

Well I don’t see it as being difficult. I actually found it quite refreshing that I met someone on this planet who is more obsessive than I am. I look at it that he’s a perfectionist. So am I. I mean that’s your art, that represents you. Your name is all over it and you want it to be the best.  It’s very rare in the film industry where you get a chance to take your time with a film. And I think it’s because of what he produces -- the final product -- that the studios are like, “Hey, this guy knows what he’s doing so, let’s give him all the time he needs.” I didn’t even count the takes. It was just great being in a position where we didn’t have to rush, rush, rush.

Because of the nature of the movie there are very few scenes in Button that don’t a special effect of some kind. How do you play off a scene reacting to a person who isn’t there and make it look convincing?

Well what they did, which was very smart, was they hired actors of various sizes to portray Benjamin Button at different ages and the actors wore a blue sock over their heads with the faces cut out and the blue sock represented the green screen on which they would then digitally transpose Brad Pitt’s face. So it wasn’t like I had someone standing off camera I was reading lines to. There were actors giving  me things I could respond to. So once Brad did his work and they CGI’d his face over it, it worked!

What’s the process you use portraying a character that ages during the course of the film starting off as a young, vivacious woman and ending up at the end as an old woman?

Well you definitely have to research what’s going on in each decade because that’s what molds us, shapes us, as we grow. We’re different people now, I mean we’ve got our first black president, things that happened in the environment that shaped and molded you. But also I had to research what happens physically to a person, to a body as it ages, what part of her body is going to cause her the most grief. And once I did the research and picked the certain part of the body that would be affected, I committed myself to it.

Sounds like method acting…

(Laughs) Yeah it does involve some method though. It’s technical, it’s method, it’s everything. It encompasses every aspect of art.

Your other film coming out soon is Not Easily Broken. Compared to Fincher what’s the experience working with an established actor and director like Duke?

I so wanted to work with Bill Duke. I took the first acting class he ever taught in L.A. and he trusted me and helped my process in how I approached and did research for a character. He’s the one who made me understand that acting is very spiritual. He would guide you about how you have to meditate and release energies and remove yourself so that the character can use your body as a vessel. I was so excited to work with him. And of course I loved going to work everyday hugging up to Morris Chestnut.

You mean Dark Gable?

(Laughs) Dark Gable! Absolutely! But I just really liked what the script was saying. There are so many broken families, it’s so easy to walk away from a relationship. But if you really make that commitment to stay, especially if you’ve found the right partner and invested so much into it, why walk away from it? There’s nothing really out there.

Would you say that your character in Broken is more like you in real life?

I put a lot of myself in everything I do. I draw from something. Exposing my character’s pain is perhaps a little insight into some of my pain, some of how I love, some of what makes me tick.

Well are you saying that acting for you can be emotionally draining at times?

It can be. It can be therapeutic. And cathartic. Like Benjamin Button; I needed to do that film because I lost my dad a year before we started filming and it actually helped me bring some resolve to that loss. But that’s the purpose of art. It can effect life.  It changes life. It creates life. What I hope to do when I portray a character is that when people see me up on the screen they can see a part of themselves in these characters and hopefully say “WOW! I need to look at this about myself and maybe I can change this for the better.” That’s what I’m hoping, to move people in a positive way, impact their lives in a positive way through my art.

I’ve got to ask you this, you’re often the target of all those black celebrity gossip websites. Sometimes they say nice things about you and sometimes not so nice. Does it bother you or do you consider it the price you pay for being in show biz?

You know what? Life is like spiritual warfare. The good against the bad, You have the positive, you have the negative. We have angels, we have devils. And I know that even Jesus couldn’t make everyone happy. So who am I?  (Laughs) I can’t make everyone happy. Everybody is not going to like me. There are some people who are not going to like me, just because….  And that’s O.K. That’s O.K. That’s life. I’m not wasting my time on trying to change them. I’m only interested in the people who are interested in me.

Film critic, lecturer and festival consultant Sergio Mims covers all things film from the city that works, Chicago. He is a regular contributor to ebonyjet.com.