Jada Pinkett Smith

• 1. Introduction

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  Jada Koren Pinkett Smith was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on the 18th of September 1971, and her first name came from a television set. Her mother chose it in honor of Jada Rowland, a soap opera actress she loved. That baby, named for a performer she would never meet, grew up to work as an actress, a producer, a rock singer, an author and a talk show host. Few careers cover that much ground. What did a girl from a Baltimore neighborhood carry with her into Hollywood? Which friendships changed her choices? And how did someone so often seen in supporting roles become a public figure who invited the world to her own kitchen table of hard conversations?

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• 2. Baltimore Roots

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  Price Avenue, in Baltimore's Pimlico and Arlington area, was the street where Jada Pinkett grew up. Her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, became pregnant while still in high school. Her parents married, then divorced after only several months. Her father, Robsol Pinkett Jr., ran a construction company. Her mother went on to work as the head nurse of an inner-city clinic. On her mother's side the family has Jamaican and Bajan roots.

  Marion Martin Banfield, her grandmother, did much of the raising alongside her mother. Banfield was a Jamaican-born social worker, married to Gilbert Banfield, a family medicine physician. Pinkett later said her grandmother was a doer who wanted to create a better community and add beauty to the world. Banfield spotted her granddaughter's love of performing and signed her up for piano, tap dance and ballet.

  The free after-school program TWIGs, short for To Work In Gaining Skills, came next. Run by the Baltimore School for the Arts, it served Baltimore City children in the 2nd through 8th grades. Students had to audition, and only a few hundred were accepted each year. About half of each entering class at the school itself came up through the program. Pinkett then enrolled at the Baltimore School for the Arts, studying acting and dance, and graduated in 1989. She has admitted she was not the best student and often arrived late. She has stayed active as an alumna.

  Teenage life off campus was looser. She went out to Cignel, Odell's Nightclub and Godfrey's Famous Ballroom, and spent time in the Coldspring and Dolfield neighborhoods. She has also said publicly that she sold drugs in Cherry Hill. After graduating, she spent a year as a drama major at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Her friend Josh Charles, whom she had first met in elementary school, was back in her life at the Baltimore school. Another classmate there would matter even more.

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• 3. Tupac and Loyalty

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  Tupac Shakur sat in the same Baltimore School for the Arts classrooms as Pinkett, and the two became close friends. The bond stayed strong long after school. In 1993 she arranged a guest appearance for him on the sitcom A Different World. She appeared in his music videos for "Keep Ya Head Up" in 1993 and "Temptations" in 1995. She also came up with the concept for the "California Love" video in 1995 and meant to direct it, though she later removed herself from the project.

  His influence reached her film career too. A recommendation from Shakur helped her win the role of a single mother named Ronnie in Menace II Society, her first feature film. Shakur had been set to appear in it as well, but he was fired. Pinkett thought about quitting the film, and he talked her into staying.

  Loyalty shaped another choice. According to actor Larenz Tate, she was lined up for the 1995 film Dead Presidents, which was directed by the same Hughes brothers who had fired Shakur from Menace II Society. She turned down the role of Delilah.

  In 1995 she put up $100,000 toward Shakur's bail while he waited on an appeal of his sexual abuse conviction. She later revealed that she turned down a marriage proposal from him at Rikers Island that same year. Shakur said of her, "Jada is my heart. She will be my friend for my whole life." In the 2003 documentary Tupac: Resurrection, she called him like a brother and said a bond like theirs comes only once in a lifetime.

  In 2006 she gave $1 million to her old high school and dedicated its new theater to her friend.

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• 4. Climbing the Call Sheet

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  A single episode of the series True Colors in 1990 gave Pinkett her first acting credit. In 1991 she picked up guest roles on Doogie Howser, M.D. and 21 Jump Street. That same year she landed a part on Bill Cosby's NBC sitcom A Different World, playing a college freshman named Lena James.

  The show was already a hit when she joined in its fourth season, and she stayed until the end of its run. Like Pinkett, Lena came from a poor part of Baltimore. As a freshman she felt like an outsider and said, "I really miss my homeboys." By her sophomore year, when her Baltimore friends visited, she was caught between the world she was raised in and the world at Hillman College. She started as an engineering major, found a talent for writing and switched to journalism.

  Film came next. In 1994 she played Peaches, a character she called raw with major attitude, in A Low Down Dirty Shame with Keenen Ivory Wayans. The New York Times wrote that her performance was "as sassy and sizzling as a Salt-N-Pepa recording." That year she also starred opposite Allen Payne in Jason's Lyric. Critic Roger Ebert praised the chemistry between the two, noting that they really seemed to like one another. She also appeared in The Inkwell, and in 1995 played a convict on work release in the horror film Demon Knight.

  The Nutty Professor, her 1996 film with Eddie Murphy, earned $25 million in its first North American weekend and $274 million worldwide. Set It Off, also from 1996, put her beside Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox and Kimberly Elise as one of four women who rob banks to escape poverty. The San Francisco Chronicle called her "the one to watch." Made for $9 million, it took in $41 million globally.

  In 1997 she had a cameo as a college student killed in front of a crowd of filmgoers in Scream 2, which earned over $100 million in North America. In 1998 she played a news reporter in Return to Paradise and took the title role in the comedy Woo. Spike Lee cast her in Bamboozled in 2000. Reviews were mediocre, but the film won the National Board of Review's Freedom of Expression Award. In 2001 she played a loud-mouthed wife in Kingdom Come.

  Then came Ali, in which she played Sonji Roi, the boxer's first wife, opposite Will Smith. She doubted she was right for the part. In her words, "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."

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• 5. Niobe and After

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  Right after she finished her scenes for Ali, Pinkett Smith flew to Australia to start work on the Matrix sequels. The part of the human rebel Niobe had been written with her specifically in mind. She played the role in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, both released in 2003, and in the related video game Enter the Matrix. The two films opened in North America with over $91 million and $48 million respectively.

  In 2004 she played a Justice Department prosecutor targeted by a contract killer in the neonoir thriller Collateral, with Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise. It grossed $217.8 million worldwide. In 2005 she gave her voice to Gloria, a hippopotamus, in the animated Madagascar. Co-director Tom McGrath said they heard the strength and sweetness of the character in her voice. Critics were mixed, yet the film earned $532 million worldwide. She returned as Gloria for Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa in 2008, which took in US$603 million internationally, and again in 2012 for Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, which made over US$746 million.

  In 2007 she appeared as a dentist's wife in Reign Over Me. Entertainment Weekly found her "graceful" in it. The next year brought the comedy The Women, for which she earned a Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Actress even though the film was a commercial success. Also in 2008 she made her directorial debut with the drama The Human Contract, which she wrote and starred in alongside Paz Vega and Idris Elba. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2008.

  Television pulled her back on the 16th of June 2009, when the TNT medical drama Hawthorne premiered. She was both an executive producer and its lead, playing a Chief Nursing Officer. USA Today was harsh, calling it painfully predictable. The series ended on the 16th of August 2011, after three seasons. In 2014 she joined the FOX crime drama Gotham as the gangster Fish Mooney, a series regular in season one who returned in seasons two and three.

  The comedies followed. Magic Mike XXL in 2015 cast her as the manager of a star stripper club and made US$122.5 million worldwide. Bad Moms in 2016 earned more than US$183.9 million despite mixed reviews. Girls Trip in 2017, with Regina Hall, Queen Latifah and Tiffany Haddish, grossed US$140 million worldwide. It was named one of Time magazine's top ten films of 2017, and it was the first comedy of that year to pass US$100 million domestically. She returned as Niobe in The Matrix Resurrections in 2021.

  At the Essence Festival in July 2017, she sat on the Empowerment Stage with Queen Latifah. She said the Girls Trip cast mirrored their characters in real life, as women who love other women and work to empower each other. In her view, that is rare in Hollywood.

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• 6. Wicked Wisdom

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  In 2002, under the name Jada Koren, Pinkett Smith formed the metal band Wicked Wisdom and sang lead vocals. Pocket Honore played guitar and sang, Cameron "Wirm" Graves played guitar and keyboard and sang, and Rio played bass and sang. James Lassiter and Miguel Melendez of Overbrook Entertainment, a company co-founded by her husband Will Smith, managed the group.

  In April and May 2004 the band opened for Britney Spears on eight dates of the European leg of her Onyx Hotel Tour. It was one of the year's highest-profile tours.

  Sharon Osbourne saw the band at a small Los Angeles nightclub in 2005. She said she was blown away and that Pinkett Smith clearly had nothing but love and respect for the genre. In May 2005, organizers announced Wicked Wisdom would play the second stage at that year's Ozzfest. Doubts about the booking were in the air. Pinkett Smith said she was not asking for any favors and that the band had to show and prove itself.

  Early dates were rocky, guitarist Honore recalled. Then word spread that the band was no joke. By the sixth or seventh gig, he said, they were on fire. Pinkett Smith agreed, saying the whole attitude of the tour started to turn around after about seven dates.

  The self-titled debut album came out on the 21st of February 2006, released by her production company 100% Womon and Suburban Noize Records. Will Smith served as executive producer. It reached number 44 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart in the week of the 11th of March 2006. AllMusic reviewer Alex Henderson called her an expressive, commanding singer and said the band showed considerable promise. Wicked Wisdom promoted the record by touring with the heavy metal band Sevendust.

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• 7. Companies and Causes

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  Maja, a fashion label she started in 1994, sold women's T-shirts and dresses printed with the slogan "Sister Power," mostly through small catalogs. In 2003 she and Will Smith helped create the television series All of Us, which aired on UPN and later The CW. Her children's book Girls Hold Up This World followed in 2005 and reached number two on The New York Times Best Seller list. She wrote it for her daughter Willow, her daughter's friends and all the little girls who need affirmation in what she called a pretty much masculine world.

  In 2005 she was one of several celebrities who invested a combined US$10 million in Carol's Daughter, a beauty line created by Lisa Price, and she became its spokesperson. Being part of another African American woman's dream, she said, was priceless to her. In 2015 the couple were founding investors in an energy storage company. She and her husband also produce films through Overbrook Entertainment and Westbrook Inc. In 2009 they founded Westbrook, and in 2019 the talent management company Three Six Zero, led by Mark Gillespie, acquired Westbrook Entertainment. In 2010 she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Musical as a producer of the Broadway musical Fela!

  Philanthropy began early. In 1997 she served as emcee of the Million Woman March in Philadelphia. With Will she created the Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation in Baltimore, which focuses on youth in urban inner cities and on family support. Her aunt, Karen Banfield Evans, is its executive director. In 2006 the American Screenwriters Association gave the charity its David Angell Humanitarian Award. Grants have gone to groups such as YouthBuild, and she has personally donated to organizations such as Capital K-9s.

  In 2007 her aunt was diagnosed with lupus. The foundation teamed with the Lupus Foundation of America and Maybelline to hold the first Butterflies Over Hollywood event on the 29th of September 2007 at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles. It raised funds for the group's educational programs.

  Her giving also took a controversial turn. After meeting Tom Cruise on the set of Collateral, she and Will Smith donated $20,000 to the Hollywood Education and Literacy Program, which is Scientology's basis for homeschooling. She reported using Scientology's Study Technology to homeschool her children, and she credited Narconon with helping her father with his addiction.

  In 2012, writing for PETA, she asked Baltimore's mayor to make the visiting Ringling Brothers Circus follow the city's ban on bullhooks and not harm the elephants. In 2013 she appeared in a video for Gucci's Chime for Change campaign, which raises funds and awareness for women's issues around the world.

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• 8. The Red Table

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  Her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, once said she understood what her daughter wanted and never stood in her way. Pinkett Smith has said a mother and daughter's relationship is usually the most honest. She served as maid of honor at her mother's 1998 wedding to telecommunications executive Paul Jones. In May 2018 the two began hosting the Facebook Watch talk show Red Table Talk together with Willow Smith, covering a wide range of topics. A USA Today critic praised its insightful guests, no-holds-barred topics and Smith's magnetic hosting presence.

  In 2021 Time magazine named the three hosts to its list of the 100 most influential people in the world, with Tiffany Haddish choosing them. That year the show also won a Daytime Emmy Award for outstanding informative talk show. In 2023 she narrated and produced the Netflix docu-series African Queens, whose first season covered Njinga, Queen of Ndongo and Matamba, and whose second covered the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII. In October 2023 she published her memoir Worthy, which follows her path from suicidal depression to self-acceptance and spiritual healing.

  The talk show also became the place where she addressed her marriage. She first met Will Smith in 1994 on the set of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, when she auditioned to play his character's girlfriend, Lisa Wilkes. She was considered too short, and Nia Long got the part. They began dating after his divorce from Sheree Fletcher was finalized in 1995, and she moved from Baltimore to California to be with him.

  On the 31st of December 1997, about 100 guests gathered at The Cloisters, near Baltimore, for their wedding. She was three months pregnant. She later said she had never wanted to be married and that her mother urged her to do it. Their children are Jaden, born in 1998, and Willow, born in 2000. She is also stepmother to Trey Smith, Will's son from an earlier marriage.

  In April 2013 an interview comment led many to believe they had an open marriage, which she denied on Facebook. In June 2020 the singer August Alsina, a friend of her son Jaden, claimed they had an affair in 2016. A spokesman denied it. Then, on the 10th of July 2020, on a Red Table Talk episode featuring her husband, she confirmed an "entanglement" with Alsina during a period when the couple were separated. She said it was not with her husband's permission. The word went viral.

  In 2018 she revealed she had been diagnosed with the autoimmune disease alopecia areata, and she suspects stress. In December 2021 she posted an Instagram video of her shaved head, laughing and saying she and the alopecia would be friends. A joke by Chris Rock about her hair at the 94th Academy Awards led Will Smith to slap him. In October 2023 she said the couple had been separated since 2016 and had no intention to divorce.

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