Regina Taylor

Regina Taylor (born August 22, 1960) is an American actress and playwright whose career has spanned over four decades, making her a seminal figure in both screen and stage. Raised initially in Dallas before a brief move to Muskogee, Oklahoma at age twelve, she returned to Dallas where she graduated from L. G. Pinkston High School in 1977 and earned a BFA from Southern Methodist University. While still a student, she landed her first professional film roles in the television movies Nurse (1980) and Crisis at Central High (1981), where her portrayal of civil‑rights heroine Minnijean Brown earned critical praise from The New York Times. Taylor’s breakthrough came with the 1989 drama Lean on Me, playing the tragic mother Mrs. Carter, and she solidified her television fame as Lilly Harper on the early‑1990s series I’ll Fly Away, a role that garnered her a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Drama and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series. She continued to appear in notable films such as Clockers, Courage Under Fire, The Negotiator and the Showtime original Strange Justice, and she was a regular cast member on all four seasons of CBS’s The Unit, while also guest‑starring as Dr. Hannah Moshay on The Blacklist in 2018. On stage, Taylor broke barriers as the first Black woman to portray Juliet on Broadway, and she earned a Dramalogue Award for her turn as Ariel in The Tempest at the La Jolla Playhouse.
Beyond acting, Taylor is an accomplished playwright and director. Her off‑Broadway works include stop. reset. (2013) and the critically acclaimed musical Crowns, which became the most performed musical in the United States in 2006 and earned four Helen Hayes Awards, including Best Direction for Taylor herself. She has written and directed adaptations such as Drowning Crow (a reimagining of Chekhov’s The Seagull) and original plays like Magnolia and The Trinity River Plays. In 2017, she was appointed the Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in Theater at Fordham University, cementing her legacy as a mentor to future generations of artists. Her work continues to explore themes of African‑American history, identity, and resilience, making her a vital voice in contemporary American theatre and film.