At the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Kering’s Women in Motion programme marked its tenth anniversary with a conversation between Taraji P. Henson and researcher Stacy L. Smith, moderated by Angelique Jackson of Variety. The actress spoke about resilience and owning her worth; the researcher brought the figures.
What the data says
Stacy L. Smith started with progress: in 2024, 54% of the top 100 films centred on girls and women. But only 13 of those were led by women of colour, and just one by a woman of colour aged 45 or over. Women direct about 12% of films worldwide; women of colour, under 4%. Her research also challenges an old industry belief: once production and distribution are taken into account, films led by a person of colour with a cast of colour earn the most worldwide.
“They lied to me”
Henson had been told for years that “Black doesn’t translate overseas”. During the international press tour for Empire, a packed room in Paris rose to applaud her, and fans outside knew her name. “The myth was busted.” The series, she adds, only sold abroad after fans found it online.
She describes a moment when the industry made her bitter, and a month in Bali to reset. She came into acting, she says, because the arts saved her as a girl growing up in Washington, DC, during the crack epidemic, not to collect trophies. Since then she has built her own businesses, including her hair and body care brand, which she has bought back. Knowing that her audience follows her, she learned to speak up for herself and ask to be paid her worth. Her grandmother’s advice: “The squeaky wheel gets fixed.”
Women lifting each other
Henson calls herself “a girl’s girl”. During the press tour for Hidden Figures, she insisted on talking about all three women, remembering that Katherine Johnson always said “we”, never “I”. Her film Straw, for Netflix with Tyler Perry, is also led by three women.
Mental health
She founded the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation, named after her father, after struggling to find culturally competent therapists for herself and her son, who lost his father at nine. Smith adds that fewer than 3% of characters on screen are shown with a mental health condition. Henson is also working on a one-woman show for Broadway, to tell the story behind the success.