Celebrity Spotlight For April 23 Is LaTanya Richardson Jackson

LaTanya Richardson Jackson is an American actress and producer and also the wife of the popular Legendary actor; Samuel L. Jackson.

LaTanya started in off-Broadway performances before moving on to supporting roles in television and movies. She was born in Atlanta and began acting at the age of 15. She studied at the oldest women’s liberal arts college in a private HBCU, Spelman College. She began performing in the kids’ theater and kept doing so through college.

LaTanya and Samuel—both met at Morehouse College when they were college freshmen in Atlanta. They were both 21-year-old students in Atlanta when they first met in 1970, Richardson at Spellman College and Jackson at Morehouse.

As Morehouse Spellman Players actors, they shared the stage together beginning in 1970 and later got married in 1980.

According to Samuel, LaTanya was very much a “city girl, an Atlanta girl,” and she was “part of the whole Black revolutionary thing that was happening at Spelman.”

LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Samuel both share a daughter and only child; Zoe who was born in 1982. She is also a producer.

LaTanya reveals that she put her acting career on hold after Zoe was born, even though she had roles in several well-known movies. She claims she put her family first, choosing marriage and babies above a job because she wanted to create “an intact, revolutionary black family”.

Latanya is 73 yrs old. She has been together with Samuel for 53 years and has been married for 43, and despite the fact that she also calls this “very, very hard,” they continue to be warm and kind to one another.

In an interview, LaTanya told PEOPLE, it’s not just loving that kept them going but a pact they made to stay together.

“In the beginning, we always said the most revolutionary thing that Black people could do was stay together, raise their children with the nucleus of having a father and a mother since everybody likes to pretend that that’s not the dynamic of the African American family. That it’s just children out here being raised by women, which we know is false,” said LaTanya.

It”In order to change that narrative, we made a decision to say, ‘We are going to stay together no matter what. We’ll figure it out.’ “

Her film roles include Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), and The Fighting Temptations (2003). She’s also appeared on TV shows like 100 Centre Street, Blue Bloods, Luke Cage, and Grey’s Anatomy.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Jacksons gave Spelman $5 million in 2021, making it the highest alumni gift in school history.