Nia Long

Nia Long was born in Brooklyn, raised partly in Iowa and then in South Los Angeles, and trained early, studying with the acting coach Betty Bridges before she finished high school in 1989. Two years later she was Brandi in Boyz n the Hood, which put her inside the most argued-about American film of that year at twenty.

The decade that followed is the case for her. She was on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air from 1991 to 1995, she was in Friday, and then in 1997 she delivered the two performances that still define her: Nina Mosley in Love Jones and Robin in Soul Food. Love Jones is the reason she matters. Black romantic drama was not being made at that scale, and the film works because Long refuses to soften Nina into somebody easier to root for. She is guarded, ambitious and frequently wrong, and the film treats all three as adult behaviour rather than faults to be corrected.

The commercial career ran alongside it and paid better: Big Momma's House and its sequel, Are We There Yet?, Boiler Room, Stigmata, Premonition. Television kept her busy with Third Watch and NCIS: Los Angeles. The Best Man in 1999 and its 2013 follow-up gave her the ensemble she is best inside, and more recent work like The Banker and Missing shows the same unhurried authority. She is due next as Katherine Jackson in the Michael Jackson biopic.