It’s a day for celebration for Regina King fans, with the amazing actress turning 50 as her directorial debut movie gets released. King, a veteran actress with dozens of movie and TV roles in her body of work, has also spent the past several years directing episodes of various television shows. As of Jan. 15, One Night in Miami – King’s first movie as the director of a feature film – is available to stream on Amazon Prime. The early reviews have been extremely positive and it’s already looking like this will be the first of many more to come for the filmmaker.
There are many places where fans might best recognize Regina King. Some of her most well-known movie roles include titles like Friday, Boyz n the Hood, Ray, and Jerry Maguire with the actress also appearing on shows like The Leftovers, The Big Bang Theory, Seven Seconds, and Watchmen. She also voices brothers Huey and Riley Freeman in the animated series The Boondocks.
King has also won all kinds of awards over her acting career, each one truly well-deserved. She won the Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy two consecutive years in a row for her different roles in the anthology series American Crime, again picking up the nomination for the third season. King would later win the Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy in 2018 for Seven Seconds and again in 2020 for her role in Watchmen. In 2019, King also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for If Beale Street Could Talk.
Directed by King and written by Kemp Powers, One Night in Miami is set in 1964 and imagines four of the greatest minds coming together to celebrate Muhammad Ali’s title win over Sonny Liston that year. The movie stars Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm X, Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam Cooke, Aldis Hodge as Jim Brown, and Eli Goree as Cassius Clay. Beau Bridges, Lance Reddick, and Nicolette Robinson also star. As of now, the Amazon Prime original movie holds a near-perfect 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Online, fans and colleagues of King have been honoring the veteran actress and filmmaker with tribute posts in recognition of her 50th birthday. This includes a tweet from the Toronto International Film Festival, where One Night in Miami screened last year. “Happy birthday to a King,” the tweet reads, including several photos of the iconic performer.
“Happy 50th birthday, Director Regina King. AND it’s #OneNightinMiami release day as well! I know what I’ll be watching tonight,” another tweet states.
“Happy birthday to the amazing Regina King! Today also happens to be the day her Oscar-contending new film (as a director), ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI, lands on Amazon Prime,” another fan says.
Echoing many others, another fan of King writes, “Happy Birthday to the Queen, Regina King. Celebrate her birthday today by watching One Night In Miami which was just released on Amazon Prime Video and is definitely my favourite film right now since seeing it in October.”
Happy birthday, Regina King! To help ring in her birthday today, you can stream her new movie One Night in Miami right now on the official Amazon Prime app.