Crowned the “Indie Film King” by Entertainment Weekly, Terrence Howard, host of the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens, has been delivering strong performances in film and TV productions for over 20 years. He is best known for his dramatic roles in the 2006 independent features Hustle & Flow and Crash.

For his leading role in Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow, Howard received nominations for an Academy Award, Golden Globe, Image and Independent Spirit Award, and won the Satellite Award for Best Actor.

For Paul Haggis’s Crash, Howard and the all-star cast, including Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Thandie Newton and Matt Dillon, received a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble, were nominated for a Gotham Award and swept up an Oscar at the 2006 Academy Awards for Best Picture.

Howard’s love for acting was nurtured through summers spent with his grandmother, New York stage actress Minnie Gentry. He began his acting career on The Cosby Show after being discovered on a New York City street by a casting director. The chance encounter helped Howard break into features and soon he was cast in such films as Mr. Holland’s Opus.

A self-taught musician, Howard plays the piano and the guitar and can be seen displaying his musical talents opposite Jamie Foxx in the biopic Ray and singing the Academy Award-winning song It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp in Hustle & Flow. He is currently working on his first album, A Little Bit More Like Me, which is due out in fall 2008.

Some of Howard’s memorable performances are of scene-stealing characters such as ”Cowboy” in the Hughes brothers’ film Dead Presidents and as “Quentin” in Malcolm D. Lee’s film The Best Man. The latter earning him a NAACP Image Award. Other film credits include the thriller The Brave One with Jodie Foster and Idlewild with Ving Rhames and Cicely Tyson.

Maintaining a powerful presence on the small screen as well, Howard was seen in the critically acclaimed HBO film Lackawanna Blues based on Tony Award-winning Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s autobiographical play. The production has won Emmys and a Golden Globe, and the cast, which includes Jeffrey Wright and S. Epatha Merkerson, was nominated for a NAACP Image Award.

Howard is currently starring on Broadway in Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, alongside James Earl Jones and Phylicia Rashad. His upcoming films include Iron Man with Robert Downey Jr. and Fighting by writer/director Dito Montiel.

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