Kerry Washington

Actor/Actress

Kerry Washington is an award-winning American actress, producer and director. On Instagram she has a huge fan base of 6.4m followers. She was born in 1977 in The Bronx, New York City. Her mother Valerie is a professor and educational consultant and her father Earl Washington is a real estate broker. Her father’s family is of African American origin. She trained with the TADA! Youth Theatre Group and went to the Spence School in Manhattan. She went to George Washington University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1998. She trained at Michael Howard Studios in New York.

Washington made her first appearance on screen in the ABC telefilm Magical Make-Over in 1994. She went on to work on a variety of films for example she was in Save the Last Dance (2001) and spy thriller Bad Company, Ray (2004), The Last King of Scotland (2006), the Fantastic Four films (2005), Django Unchained (2012), The Dead Girl (2006) and American Son (2019). She increased her fame in the ABC drama series Scandal (2012-18) and was twice nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead and once for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a TV Series Drama.

She was in the TV political thriller ‘Confirmation’ (2016) and ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ (2020). In 2014 Time magazine included Washington in its Time 100 list of most influential people. She has won a Primetime Emmy Award and five NAACP Image Awards, amongst other awards throughout her glittering career. Washington married former NFL cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha in 2013 and together they have a son and daughter.