1.
Aldis Hodge is a serious horologist. He studied product design and architecture in college and applied those learnings to making watches, which he started conceptually designing at 19. He spent years working on prototypes for his upcoming watch brand, A. Hodge Atelier, and also designed the watch for his Black Adam character, Carter Hall/Hawkman.
2.
Zendaya has been a vegetarian since she was 11 years old. On a road trip, she and her father passed a slaughterhouse, and he explained how it all worked. She immediately decided not to eat meat anymore and never looked back. “My main reason for being a vegetarian is that I’m an animal lover — definitely NOT because I love vegetables,” she said.
3.
After a breakup, Regina Hall tried to become a nun. She’d previously been interested in joining a convent at 14 years old, but this time around, she was considered “too old” due to the age cutoff. The actor revealed that there was also a previous sexual partner cutoff. “Some you can’t have been with, I think four? But I was right at five,” she joked with a laugh.
4.
Before she was famous, Janelle Monáe worked at Office Depot. She wrote the song “Lettin’ Go” about being fired for answering fan emails on the job. Well, that song got the attention of OutKast, who featured her on their album Idlewild, and the rest is history!
5.
Spike Lee earned a BA in Communications from Morehouse College and an MFA in Film and Television from NYU. He returned to NYU as a professor, where he’s taught film students for over 30 years — a beautiful, full-circle moment! His Spike Lee Scholarship Fund has distributed over $1 million to help students fund their thesis films.
6.
You might’ve guessed that Queen Latifah is a stage name, but do you know the origins of it? The actor, who was born Dana Elaine Owens, said, “My mother raised me to believe that all women are queens and should be treated as such.” At 8 years old, she found the name Latifah in a book of Arabic names and loved the meaning: delicate, sensitive, kind, and nice.
7.
For her performance as Ramonda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Angela Bassett became the first actor to earn Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for a Marvel film. She went on to win the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture (as we all know, she got robbed at the Oscars). But that wasn’t the only time she made history! Angela became the first Black actor to win the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for her portrayal of Tina Turner in the 1993 biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It.
8.
Thanks to the PBS show Find Your Roots, RuPaul and Senator Cory Booker discovered they’re cousins. Both were happy about the news, and Cory later appeared on an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
9.
Though we all know and love her acting, Laverne Cox was actually a dancer first. She started dancing at 8 years old, received scholarships for high school and college, and ended up graduating from Marymount Manhattan College with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dance.
10.
At the Manhattan Plaza apartment complex where Alicia Keys was raised, Samuel L. Jackson worked as the building’s first security guard. Of course, he went on to become one of the greatest actors in Hollywood and recently appeared in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show.
11.
Speaking of Alicia, did you know her mom shut down her first idea for a stage name? The singer, who was born Alicia Augello Cook, flipped through the dictionary and picked the last name Wild. She recalled saying, “Alicia Wild, how does that sound, Ma?” But her mom responded, “It sounds like you’re a stripper.” So, Alicia chose Keys instead. “It’s like the piano keys. And it can open so many doors.”
12.
Terry Crews is a phenomenal artist. He was offered an art scholarship before a football scholarship in college, when he also drew courtroom sketches. After he was cut from NFL teams, he would paint some of his fellow athletes to get by, spending up to two months on each painting.
13.
John Boyega and Letitia Wright met at London’s Identity School of Acting and often went to McDonald’s. “After class, we’d meet up to discuss life, the future, and just inspiring each other,” she said. He added, “You haven’t changed. We always have life-changing conversations.”
14.
Aside from acting, Yara Shahidi possesses a number of talents. She has a black belt in Tang Soo Do (a type of karate), paints watercolors, and even crochets. The Harvard graduate, who is Black and Iranian, also speaks Farsi (it was her first language!).
15.
Halle Berry remains the first and only Black actor to win the Oscar for Best Actress. She addressed this last year, saying, “It’s certainly not because there has been nobody deserving.”
16.
While at Howard University, Chadwick Boseman was one of nine students who attended a summer exchange program at the British American Drama Academy at Oxford. Actor Phylicia Rashad, one of his teachers, asked her wealthy friends to sponsor the trip, and Denzel Washington was Chadwick’s benefactor. “The funny thing is, he showed up at the New York premiere of Black Panther,” Chadwick said. “I’m like, ‘It’s great to meet you. Big fan of your work. Just wanted to tell you thank you for paying for me to go to Oxford.’ He was like, ‘Oh, you owe me money!'”
17.
After high school, Tessa Thompson wanted to join the Peace Corps, but they required a college degree. So, she attended college — graduating with a BA in cultural anthropology — but fell in love with acting along the way.
18.
You probably know Karamo Brown from Queer Eye, but did you know he appeared on The Real World: Philadelphia first? Back in 2004, he was cast on the MTV show, becoming one of the first openly gay, Black men on reality TV.
19.
And finally, At 19 years old, Sheryl Lee Ralph was the youngest woman to graduate from Rutgers College at the time. In 2023, she returned to her alma mater to give a commencement speech, recalling that she had no pictures of her graduation day because she worked a Skippy peanut butter commercial instead. “I made the right decision. Look at me now,” she joked. “But seriously, what a blessing. I got to do the commercial, and today, I get to take a picture in the cap and gown.”
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