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As one of Hollywood’s most exciting and talented new stars, Brian Tyree Henry seems to have the world of cinema at his feet, but the Academy Award nominated Causeway actor hasn’t always brimmed with confidence in glittering celebrity environments. As a child who grew up in the projects and used Boyz n the Hood as a template for his own life, Brian has frequently felt out of place in award season, but as Hollywood comes to appreciate his tremendous range and versatility this Secret Superhero’s place at the top table seems thoroughly deserved. 

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A HOUSE FULL OF ADULTS

Brian was born in Lafayette, North Carolina, in 1982; his father was a retired military man, and his mother a teacher. He loved exploring his creative side with his mother, and would accompany her to her sixth grade classroom in the summer months to help with decorating, drawing Disney characters for the walls. He began appearing in school plays while in Lafayette, but he also learnt a great deal of his early theatrical skills at home. Brian was the youngest of five kids, with four elder sisters who were all in their teens by the time he was born, and he later described how “acting really started for me because I was in a house full of adults. They never shielded their lives from me. They were adults going through this world doing what they had to do. I used to like to watch them and imitate them.” 

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The adult lives in his household were complicated, and this led to Brian’s parents separating. Afterwards, he moved with his mother to Washington DC. Life in the capital was tough, and as Brian later told The Guardian, “it was the 90s in which, you know, we were ravaged by crack and HIV and Aids. We lived in the projects and it was not a good time”. Brian continued acting because “it was a place for me to escape. Acting was safe, you know what I mean? It was a place that I could go and live in these worlds and tell these stories.” Back at home, his mother worried about the environment Brian was in, and came to a difficult decision, telling Brian “I can’t teach you how to be a man, you gotta go and live with your dad.” 

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FAMILY N THE HOOD

Brian later recognised this as a quote from Reva Styles, Angela Bassett’s character in the seminal 1991 movie Boyz n the Hood. Although far too young to watch such adult content, Brian managed to secure unfettered access to a copy of the film, and watched it repeatedly, seeing many parallels between the characters and his own family. “I felt like it was the story of my life, because my father was definitely [the character] Furious and my mother was definitely Angela Bassett with shoulder pads stirring the coffee.”

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At the end of Boyz N The Hood, the film’s protagonist, Tre, leaves his troubled community to go to Morehouse College in Atlanta, and so Brian did the same. He had excellent grades, and at that stage had no intention of pursuing acting as anything more than a hobby, and his family had high expectations of him -  “My family was pretty practical—as a young man having the opportunity to go to Morehouse, you should do business, you should do law” - so he enrolled as a business major. Unfortunately, he hated the subject, and when two classmates invited him to audition for a play he jumped at the chance, and was subsequently awarded the lead role. Soon after he was being encouraged to apply to Yale to study drama, and much to his surprise, his application was successful.

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IMPOSTER NO MORE

After graduating, Brian gravitated towards the theater, appearing in Shakespeare plays and swiftly making his Broadway debut as an original cast member of The Book Of Mormon. His major breakthrough came on television, when he was cast in 2016 in Donald Glover’s hugely acclaimed comedy Altlanta. His performances as Alfred “Paper-Boi” Miles won him a legion of fans, and a handful of Emmy nominations to accompany the Tony nomination he received for his stage work in Lobby Hero. It also brought him to the attention of filmmakers, and his performances in 2018’s If Beale Street Could Talk and the Steve McQueen film Widows catapulted him into the top tier of emerging Hollywood talents. 

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In the years since his reputation has only grown, thanks in part to the remarkable versatility he has displayed. Brian is equally comfortable in superhero movies such as Eternals (where he plays Phastos), as he is in more thoughtful fare such as 2022’s Causeway, for which he has been nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Pleasingly, he’ll be competing for honors alongside Angela Bassett, who played such an important - if inadvertent - role in his childhood, and is also nominated at the 2023 Oscars for her role as Queen Ramonda in Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever. 

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Hopefully, this ascent to the upper pantheons of Hollywood celebrity will help address the imposter syndrome which Brian says has plagued him earlier in his career. In 2018 he told the Guardian that "For a long time I had imposter syndrome. I always felt I was made to feel like I didn’t really belong here”, and described how he even felt out of place as an audience member at a Golden Globes ceremony: “It was the most humbling experience, but it was the moment that I realized, like, ‘Yo, you’re in the room too. Like, chill out man, you’re in the room too, there’s a reason you’re sitting here.”’ Despite these entirely unwarranted concerns about inadequacy, Brian has still managed to use his voice productively in support of many important causes, including voter engagement and mental health awareness initiatives, and as his celebrity grows it seems this Secret Superhero’s voice will only become more powerful with time. 

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