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Queen Latifah Rules
By : Bret Love
In its brief three decades of existence, hip-hop has historically been the domain of men driven by testosterone and braggadocio. Widely known as the first lady of hip-hop, Queen Latifah emerged at the tender age of 18 and rapidly proved she could more than hold her own against macho peers such as Ice-T and Public Enemy. But even more impressive is the way she has sustained her 20-year career, moving from rapping to acting, artist management and singing—ultimately proving a success in all of them.
Born Dana Owens in 1970, the girl who would be Queen grew up in East Orange, New Jersey, with a schoolteacher mother and a policeman father. Given the nickname Latifah (Arabic for "kind") by a cousin at the age of 8, she was raised in the Baptist church and eventually led her high school basketball team to two New Jersey state championships.
Today, the Queen credits these roots for helping to keep her grounded in the wake of Hollywood fame and fortune. "I have great family and friends that do not treat me like Queen Latifah," she admits with a smile during an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival. "When you go to your mom's house and she asks you to take the dog out and you've got to scoop poop, Queen Latifah is out the window, you know? So I'm back to just Latifah or Dana, and that keeps me pretty normal. When I go home and hang out with my cousins, I'm not treated like royalty. They'll tell me the truth, whether it hurts or not, and I need that."
That sort of grounding family dynamic was also part of the allure of Latifah's latest film, The Secret Life of Bees, which was adapted from the bestseller by Sue Monk Kidd. In it, she plays August Boatwright, starring alongside Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo as three beekeeping sisters who take in a troubled girl (Dakota Fanning) and her caregiver (Jennifer Hudson) in mid-'60s South Carolina.
"I think the thing that most attracted me to the film was the amount of love," she says. "As an actor, you gotta put your mind in some very dark, troubled places, thinking of difficult times in your life that would put you in the mind of a certain character. But [August] was so caring, so nurturing that she only had to go to places of love, so I thought that could be a really wonderful place for my inner spirit, for the Dana Owens that's inside of that character. I could live in August and feel really comfortable for a few months."
Latifah spoke highly of her The Secret Life of Bees co-stars, and seemed particularly enthusiastic about her experience working with them on the North Carolina set.
"With who August is and who I am and this cast that I got to work with," she recalls warmly, "I felt very comfortable between takes. These were my sisters on and off set. I felt like we could go have some lunch together, or I could leave them alone and not speak to them for a while 'cuz they might need a nap. You know what I mean? I just felt very relaxed and very comfortable with everybody."
Truth is, Latifah has seemed increasingly relaxed and comfortable as an actress in recent years, earning an Oscar nomination for her scene-stealing role in 2002's Chicago and bringing in major box office numbers with films ranging from Bringing Down the House and Beauty Shop to Ice Age: The Meltdown and Hairspray. And while she's made more than 15 films in the last six years, the undisputed queen of hip-hop has made only two albums in that time, the jazzy The Dana Owens Album and Trav'lin' Light, which found her interpreting pop standards by Peggy Lee and Nina Simone with a surprisingly assured, jazzy flair.
"With films," she says when asked to compare the two mediums, "you're kinda stepping into someone else's shoes, saying someone else's words and bringing what you are to that character. When you make music, you have the freedom to feel whatever you feel and write whatever you write. But they're not mutually exclusive: Music inspires me as far as what I do, acting-wise. I could play eight bars of a song and that would put me right where I need to be... I could play a Clark Sisters record and the harmonies would make me want to cry in two seconds."
But there doesn't seem to be a whole of crying going on in Queen Latifah's world these days: Last year she was selected by Jenny Craig to replace Kirstie Alley as the company's spokeswoman; the low-budget Secret Life of Bees was a crowd-pleasing commercial success; and her surprise "Saturday Night Live" cameo as presidential debate moderator Gwen Ifill earned rave reviews. Now she's preparing for the release of this summer's Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, in which she reprises her role as sassy mastodon Ellie.
Though she acknowledges wanting to have or perhaps adopt a child of her own and start a family one day, the 38-year-old seems truly content with her lot in life at the moment. She admits feeling driven to succeed, but Queen Latifah is determined not to let any setbacks along the way ruffle her regal feathers.
"The Oscar thing with Chicago," she recalls, "I didn't feel like, 'If I don't win this Oscar, it's over.' I'm not that person. I see a silver lining and a lesson in everything. I'm just trying to grow and learn, and hope that I just continue to be myself. I hope that myself is what people want, not some idea of who people want me to be."
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