Winner for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture for Ray at the NAACP Image Awards in 2005 and nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Actress for the film Lift in 2002, Kerry Washington is proving to be one of the busiest actresses in Hollywood. She has just completed filming Last King of Scotland with Forest Whitaker in Uganda and was seen earlier this year in 20th Century Fox Studios’ Mr. and Mrs. Smith, starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and Fantastic Four, directed by Tim Story and based on the beloved Marvel comics’ superheroes.

In Ray, the inspirational life story of Ray Charles directed by Taylor Hackford, Ms. Washington stars opposite Jamie Foxx as Charles’s wife, Della. Prior to Ray, she played the lead role opposite Anthony Mackie in Spike Lee’s She Hate Me. In addition, she recently wrapped Sidney Lumet’s HBO film Strip Search, which exposes some of the McCarthy-like paranoia that has plagued America since 9/11; in it she co-stars with Ellen Barkin, Glenn Close, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. At the same time that she was shooting Strip Search, she was also filming the independent film Sexual Life, a series of vignettes about people and their relationships. In this film, Ms. Washington co-stars with Tom Everett Scott, Dulé Hill, Anne Heche, and Azura Skye.

Other film credits for Ms. Washington include Paramount Pictures’ Against the Ropes, starring Meg Ryan; Paramount Classic’s The United States of Leland, opposite Don Cheadle, Kevin Spacey, and Ryan Gosling; Miramax’s The Human Stain, starring Nicole Kidman and Sir Anthony Hopkins; Jerry Bruckheimer’s Bad Company, starring Chris Rock and Sir Anthony Hopkins and directed by Joel Schumacher; and Lift, written and directed by DeMane Davis and Khari Streeter. She’s probably best known for her role in Paramount Pictures’ Save the Last Dance, where she starred opposite Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas, in which Ms. Washington received a Teen Choice Award for Best Breakout Performance. Prior to that, Ms. Washington starred in the highly acclaimed independent film, Our Song, playing a wise but conflicted teen.