Happy Birthday, Queen Latifah: Fem Film Rogue Icon Spotlight

Happy birthday, Queen Latifah.

Is there anyone more iconic than the sensational, multitalented Queen Latifah?

Born Dana Elaine Evans on this day, the U.N.I.T.Y. rapper, singer, actress, talk show host, entrepreneur, and producer first took flight on the music circuit with giant bold hats, flashy jewelry, and kente fashion, weaving a proud African Diaspora into her songs and imagery.

Scooter (Cress Williams, left) and Alonzo (Adam Lazarre-White) battled for Khadijah (Queen Latifah, center) in Living Single.

On television, Latifah currently plays in Star, but it was Khadijah James that first revealed her silver screen potential. Every week, viewers tuned in on FOX's Living Single partly due to a full figured, voluptuous lead who owned Flava Magazine, supported her girlfriends through their hilarious hijinks and was the apple of many men's eyes like cameo loves from Morris Chestnut, Grant Hill, and Isaiah Washington. Although Latifah scored a NAACP Image nomination, the Emmy's and Golden Globes ignored the dynamic Living Single, preferring white Friends, the copycat much later on.

The classic Set It Off's bank robbing Black women clique: Stony (Jada Pinkett-Smith), Tisean (Kimberly Elise), Cleo (Queen Latifah), and Frankie (Vivica A. Fox).

In the meantime, Latifah has had great roles in the film arena like the feisty lesbian Cleo Sims in Set it Off-- leading to an Independent Spirit Award nomination. She has starred with fellow rappers and again, treated as a goddess to pursue in Brown Sugar (with Mos Def), Last Holiday (with LL Cool J), and Just Wright (with Common). Brown Sugar, is a small but minor part for Latifah and Last Holiday (if you can forget the whole hotel segment with the uninteresting white people and focus only on Latifah and LL Cool J) is the more tolerable gem of the three.

Mama (Queen Latifah) belts it out.

Latifah's memorable performance in Chicago truly put Hollywood on notice (though the Black community already knew Latifah was exceptionally gifted). For the incredibly nuanced Manton Mama Morton, a busty blues singer and leader of the prison row circuit that Roxie (Renee Zellweger) finds herself in, Latifiah is full of magnificent gusto and relish in an anti-mammy archetype. Her every scene is a steal. Latifah garnered Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, but the critics favored her co-star Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Queen Latifah plays the illustrious Bessie Smith in the HBO film Bessie; directed by Oscar nominated Dee Rees. It's a match made in heaven.

The Grammy award-winning Latifah has gone on to phenomenal career highlights scoring a Gracie Allen, Image, SAG, and Golden Globe for playing an AIDS activist Life Support and winning accolades for playing noted singer Bessie Smith-- a NAMIC, Image, SAG, Black Reel, and an Emmy (for producing). She created the Queen cosmetics line for Cover Girl, hosted a talk show, co-wrote Put on Your Crown: Life-Changing Moments on the Path to Queendom and authored Queen of the Scene, a children's book. She has starred in the Ice Age films, Hairspray, Steel Magnolias (all Black remake of the 90's classic), Flint, and Girls Trip.

The Girls Trip's flosse posse was a huge R rated hit! Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith), Ryan (Regina Hall), Sasha (Queen Latifah), and Dina (Tiffany Haddish) attend the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans. 

With an impressive career spanning decades and touching countless generations along the way, Latifah continues being a jack of all trades. She enters every creative avenue as though always belonging. She carves out a niche for herself and others, a leading personality in opening doors. Her production company, Flavor Unit Entertainment, has recently teamed with Essence in order to support makers of color. They'll be financed to create and promote new content that focuses on the life experiences Black women endure. In addition, she launched The Queen Collective-- a way of putting women directors on the map via film, TV, and commercials.

Although not yet directing, Latifah does hope to shoot a comic book adaptation (Storm or Vixen would be perfect) or a science fiction film (Works by Nalo Hopkinson, Tananarive Due, and Octavia Butler come to mind). She has upcoming roles in The Trap co-starring T. I. and Mike Epps and the Master Plan biopic Master of the South.

Whether its behind-the-scenes producing new series and films, a new rap or jazz album release, or a new film or television series, Queen Latifah always delivers a charming, charismatic, and dynamite performance.

Rest in peace to Rita Owens a shining light in Queen Latifah's life and career. It's especially memorable that she played Khadijah James' mother on Living Single. Those episodes gave a hint of their loving, tender bond. 

Memorable Queen Latifah Quotes:

"There's no way I can represent for everyone. I can't represent for all women or all big women or all black women. It's important for people not to make celebrities their source of who they should be in life. I can't take on the pressure of being perfect. Nobody is."

"I really don't know how to be anyone else, and whenever I try to be anyone else, I fail miserably. Or I disappoint myself. It doesn't build my self-esteem, and it doesn't help me grow me at all."


"It was a very vulnerable time going from being insecure about my body and who I am to becoming comfortable with me. I had to tune out what the hell everybody else had to say about who I was. When I was able to do that, I felt free."

"I wish every woman would love herself and embrace what she was given naturally."