Terrance Howard first entered the entertainment industry in 1992 portraying Jackie Jackson in the ABC miniseries “The Jacksons: An American Dream.” He then made his big film break in 1995 with “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”
Howard would continue to be cast in television and movie roles that highlighted his ability to successfully convey a character, however, the Academy Award-nominated actor believes it is time for him to step aside and let young rising Hollywood stars step up.
While on the red carpet celebrating the release of the Peacock series, “The Best Man: The Final Chapters” in Los Angeles, Howard revealed to “Entertainment Tonight” co-host Kevin Frazier that this project would be his final one.
“This is the end for me,” he said. “For me, umm, you know, like I retired two years ago. For the most part I was done … I asked Sidney Poitier uhh 10 years ago, does he want to do any more work and he said, ‘Why would I spend my last 10 years doing an impersonation of myself?’ And that’s what I’ve gotten to.”
Howard continued by expressing that he receives joy from watching “new talents” pave their way into Hollywood.
“Now, I’m enjoying watching other new talent come along and I don’t want to do an impersonation of myself anymore. There’s some better actors out there that can do things that I was never able to do. So, I wanna applaud them. I wanna be excited by what they’re doing.”
As Howard said before, he initially had plans to retire in 2020, following the end of FOX’s hit show “Empire,” created by screenwriter Lee Daniels.
In a 2019 interview with “Extra TV” Howard said, “I spent 37 years pretending to be people so people can watch me pretend and I think it’s time to just be Terry for a while.”
Howard has successfully cemented his legacy with performances such as Lucious Lyon in “Empire,” Jim Ellis in “Pride,” Bama in “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” and many more memorable roles.
Though he’s made claims about leaving the acting world behind in the past without fully seeing it through, Howard seemed pretty adamant about his decision while chatting with Fraizer, however, only time will truly tell.
