Jennifer Kate Hudson (𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 September 12, 1981), also known by her nickname J.Hud, is an American singer and actress.
Having received numerous accolades for her work in music, film, television, and theater, Hudson became the youngest woman and third African-American recipient of all four major American entertainment awards: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT) in 2022. She was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013, and Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2020.
Hudson rose to fame in 2004 as a finalist on the third season of the reality series American Idol, wherein she placed seventh. She signed with Arista Records to release her self-titled debut studio album (2008), which peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 and won Best R&B Album in 51st Annual Grammy Awards. Her second and third studio albums, I Remember Me (2011) and JHUD (2014), both peaked within the top ten of the Billboard 200; the latter was released by RCA Records. She signed with Interscope to release her fourth album, The Gift of Love (2024), her first solo project in a decade.
She made her film debut as Effie White in the musical Dreamgirls (2006), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and became the youngest African-American recipient of the award. She has since portrayed Aretha Franklin in the musical biopic Respect (2021) and acted in films such as Sex and the City (2008), The Secret Life of Bees (2008), Winnie Mandela (2011), Black Nativity (2013), Sing (2016), Cats (2019). She also has appeared in shows such as Smash (2012), Empire (2015) and Confirmation (2016).
On stage, she acted in the Broadway musical revival The Color Purple (2015) and won the Tony Award for Best Musical as a producer of A Strange Loop (2022). Hudson has served as a coach on both the UK and the US versions of the reality series The Voice from 2017 to 2019, and became the first female coach to lead a winning team on the former. Since 2022, she has hosted her own talk show, The Jennifer Hudson Show.
Early life
Hudson was 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 in Chicago, Illinois. She is the third and youngest 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 of Darnell Donerson and Samuel Simpson, a Greyhound Lines bus driver. She, her older sister Julia, a school bus driver, and her brother Jason Hudson, were raised primarily by their mother. Her father was absent from her 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥hood until, with the blessing of her mother, she went looking for him at age 14. When Hudson found her father, she learned that he had 26 other 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren. She has stated she has still not met all of her half-siblings.
She was raised as a Baptist in Englewood and attended Dunbar Vocational High School, from which she graduated in 1999. She cites Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, and Patti LaBelle as her overall biggest influences and inspiration. She has also credited Mariah Carey as being one of her musical “heroes”. At age 7 she got her start in performing by singing with the church choir and doing community theater with the help of her late maternal grandmother, Julia. She enrolled at Langston University but she left after a semester due to homesickness and unhappiness with the weather, and registered at Kennedy–King College.
In January 2002, Hudson signed her first recording contract with Righteous Records, a Chicago-based independent record label. She was released from her five-year contract with Righteous Records so that she could appear on American Idol in 2004.
