"When I was 6 years old, we got robbed at gunpoint," Taraji P. Henson recalls. "A man with a stocking cap on his head and a gun in his hand ran up to my mom and me in the parking lot of our building.
"I remember it like yesterday," says the Oscar-nominated actress, who grew up in Washington. "The man raced up to my mother, grabbed a clump of her hair and ripped her head back. I stood there looking at the barrel of his gun and holding our McDonald's bag in my shaking hands. He ripped out her hair and Mom gave him her purse. He took off running."
Her mother, a corporate manager, chalked up the incident to the dangers of city life, Henson says.
"The second time we were robbed, I was a preteen living in the same complex," the actress continues, "and it wasn't the projects, it was a nice building. But some knucklehead raced up to my mom in the same parking lot and punched her in the eye. Mom began to scream, 'Not again! Not again!'
"This time the robber ran off with her purse and she went to the hospital with a ripped retina," Henson continues, her voice unsteady. "What I can never get out of mind was that drive to the hospital. Mom was still being strong, but the sting from the punch caused one lone tear to roll down her face. Still she wouldn't allow another one to fall. She wanted me to see her coping with what life had to offer."
She sighs.
"I have goose bumps telling this story," the actress says. "The moral of it is that, after all of this happening to me, it feels good just to act tough, even in a movie. I felt like I had all the power."
In other words, Henson didn't need Method acting to get a handle on her role in No Good Deed, a thriller set to open nationwide today. She plays Terri, a wife and mother of two living an ideal life in a swanky Atlanta suburb. One night her husband is away on business, however, and she hears a knock on the door.
On her doorstep is Colin (Idris Elba), a charming man who claims to be having car trouble. Terri lets him use her telephone, only to find out what the audience already knows: Colin is an escaped con, a sociopath with no morals and a flair for violence.
"It's a psychological thriller, and not one of those blood-and-gore fests," Henson says. "The film starts out with the man who is obviously playing a game with me and I have no idea what's truly going on."
Henson has attended some test screenings, sneaking in after the film starts to sit in the back row. She likes what she has heard from the audiences.
"Everyone knows that Idris is up to no good," she says, laughing. "Women were actually screaming at the screen, 'Girl! Don't open that door!'
"The great part is that the audience knows he's cray-cray," Henson continues. "But as soon as he goes into cray-cray mode, then Terri goes into action herself."
In other words, Terri is no quailing damsel in distress.
"As a mother, I know that women will lift an entire half a car to free their child pinned underneath," Henson says. "When you mix danger and your babies, then you have the inner strength of Godzilla."
The final fight scene, pitting the 5-foot-4 Henson against the 6-foot-2 Elba, tested the 43-year-old actress to her limits.
"It took three nights to film," she says, "and it was very physical. I had never done anything like that in my entire career. I found out that movie fighting is like dancing. It was very meticulous and straining."
Nonetheless, Henson was ready to rumble.
"I was shocked at how tough I am," she says. "I come from the mentality that I'm not going to lay down. With the kind of things that happened when I was younger, I know that, if someone attacks, I will fight. I have nothing to lose.
"I'm not that tall, but I'm mighty," Henson says. "Plus any fight is really more of a mind game. It's psychological -- and no one plays with my mind."
On the set in Atlanta, Henson says, she enjoyed a playful relationship with her co-star.
"We were laughing between takes," she recalls. "When the director called 'Cut,' we watched all these crazy, dumb videos on YouTube. It was such a tense story that we needed the relief."
To her, though, No Good Deed is more than a run-of-the-mill thriller.
"You hardly ever see two African-American leads in a thriller," Henson explains. "Think about it. We wanted to make something that everybody could identify with, because what happens to Terri could happen to anybody.
"This is an old-school thriller."
The other major project on her radar is Lee Daniels' Empire, a forthcoming Fox series in which she co-stars with Terrence Howard, who also starred in Hustle & Flow (2005), Henson's breakthrough movie.
The show casts them as Lucious and Cookie Lyon, a married couple with three children, who are also business partners.
"He's a talented rapper like a Jay-Z," Henson says. "We start a small-time record label and get the money to start it by selling drugs. During the last drug drop, we get busted and Cookie takes the heat. She does 17 years in jail while she watches her husband create this enormously successful company that he's about to take public."
The show picks up with a more-than-peeved Cookie finally being released from jail.
"Before she can get to the anger, she has to dig through the hurt," Henson says. "In 17 years only one of her sons has ever come to visit her. So believe me when I say that Cookie is coming back to get what's hers."
It's the kind of part an actress waits a lifetime for.
"Sometimes all the energy in the world and the stars line up," Henson says. "That's this project. I haven't felt this way about anything since I did Hustle & Flow. ... It's so raw, ugly and beautiful at the same time. Honestly, I'm scared. This is a show that questions everything about life."
The actress spent much of her youth explaining her name.
"It's Swahili," she says. "It means 'Hope.' My middle name is Penda, which means 'Love.'"
After attending North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, where she majored in electrical engineering, she transferred to Howard University in Washington to study theater, paying her way by working as a secretary at the Pentagon and as a waitress for Odyssey Cruises.
A few years of scrapping for television roles and bit parts in movies ended when Henson was cast as Yvette in John Singleton's critically praised Baby Boy (2001). Her performance in Hustle & Flow (2005) as Shug, a pregnant prostitute who turns out to have musical talent, put her on a roll that continues to this day.
Henson's big-screen credits include Four Brothers (2005), Hurricane Season (2009), Date Night (2010), The Karate Kid (2010), Larry Crowne (2011), Think Like a Man (2012) and Think Like a Man Too (2014). She was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) as a nursing-home worker who becomes a surrogate mother to the title character (Brad Pitt), who is mysteriously aging in reverse. She also has had regular roles on Boston Legal (2007-2008), Eli Stone (2008) and Person of Interest (2011-2013).
"I look up and say, 'God, girl, you've been busy,'" she says. "I can't stop. I'm a creative person. I just love the process of creating. I love playing different characters."
A single mom who lives in Glendale, Calif., with her 20-year-old son, Marcel, Henson is happy to report that these days her mother is a long way from the streets of Washington.
"She lives in Florida in a cute little house and goes on cruises," the actress says. "She's so proud of me that she can't even take it."
In 2009, when she was nominated for an Oscar, Henson took her mother and grandmother to the ceremony with her.
"My grandmother, who is 90 now, grew up in a small town in North Carolina where she had to use a separate entrance to go into buildings," Henson says. "She lived off a dirt road with no streetlights. Suddenly she was getting her hair done to watch her baby walk down the red carpet, and she would be walking proud next to me. My stylist made sure that she had the fanciest dress. My makeup artist did all of our faces -- three generations of strong women.
"It makes me cry just thinking about it."
MovieStyle on 09/12/2014