Alfre Woodard

Alfre Woodard’s work as an actor has earned her an Oscar nomination, four Emmy Awards, 17 Emmy nominations, three SAG awards and a Golden Globe.

Her most recent Emmy nominations were for Outstanding Supporting Actress in the Lifetime remake of Steel Magnolias and for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series on the HBO show, True Blood. Woodard’s illustrious body of work includes her Oscar nominated performance in Martin Ritt’s Cross Creek; HBO’s Mandela; Lawrence Kasdan’s Grand Canyon; John Sayles’ Passion Fish; Joseph Sargent’s Miss Evers’ Boys, for which she won an Emmy, SAG and Golden Globe Award; Spike Lee’s Crooklyn; Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love and Basketball; Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys; Maya Angelou’s Down in the Delta; and Steve McQueen’s Twelve Years a Slave in the role of Mistress Harriet Shaw.

Woodard just finished filming on Mississippi Grind, New Line’s Annabelle, and TNT’s The Last Ship set to premiere this June. She will star next in the new NBC drama series, State of Affairs. She visited Haiti with Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn for the filming of A Path Appears.

Woodard directed and produced, “Nelson Mandela’s Favorite African Folktales,” which won the 2010 Audiobook of the Year, and garnered a 2010 Grammy Award nomination for “Best Children’s Spoken Word Album.”

In addition to her acting career, Woodard is a longtime activist. She co-founded Artists for a New South Africa, a nonprofit working to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and further the cause of democracy and human rights in South Africa. She currently serves on the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences International Outreach Committee.