Jeffrey Wright's Father Died When He Was Young, but His Mom Was a Trailblazer

Although it took a long time for him to get the kind of recognition he deserves, Jeffrey Wright has long been one of the best actors working in Hollywood. Now that he's been nominated for Best Actor, some are looking more closely at his biography, and how he came to be one of the most reliable screen presences of the 21st century.

Among the things that fans of Jeffrey's seem to be curious about, many are wondering who his parents are, and how much they had to do with the way his career has taken shape. Here's everything we know about Jeffrey Wright's parents.

Jeffrey was born on Dec. 7, 1965 to Barbara Evon Whiting-Wright and James Charles Wright, Jr. He was born in Washington, D.C., and his father died while he was still a child. Barbara had to raise her son largely on her own, but even as she did that, she also maintained an incredibly successful career as a customs lawyer. She was the first Black woman to have the title customs law specialist for the United States Customs Service, and was particularly focused on the welfare of Black women.

Jeffrey attended St. Albans School, which is a boarding school for boys, and went to Amherst College after graduating. After that, he decided to pursue a career in acting, and attended NYU's Tisch School for the Arts for just two months before dropping out.

Although his mother had taken a very different path to success, Jeffrey eventually found plenty of success of his own thanks in large part to his start in theater.

In 2019, though, Barbara died of colon cancer while at Howard University Hospital. As he has discussed his work on American Fiction, the film for which he is Oscar-nominated, he explained the way the character he played resonated with him in part because of his relationship to his own mother. In fact, the first person Jeffrey thanked after receiving his nomination was his mother.

"The first person I acknowledged was my mom. There’s a picture of her just there, so yeah… she and I had a moment," he explained during an interview with Extra. Jeffrey said that he thinks the heart of his character, Monk, is his relationship with his mom.

"I think the emotional heart of the film is my character Monk's relationship to his mother. That’s largely driving some of the choices that he makes," he explained.

"Yes, he writes this book out of a sense of outrage," he continued. "He thinks this kind of farcical, dismissive book is beneath him, so he writes it as a joke to show up the hypocrisy of the publishing industry, whereas the books that he actually wants to write are not well received."

"But, he does all of this as well out of a sense of responsibility to his mother and to his family," Jeffrey continued. "So, that's the nucleus of the story and I think my son felt that when he saw it, my daughter too. They recognized that the character is a lot like me – she said there’s a lot of my humor in there. Pretty much anyone who knows me goes, 'That’s pretty much you dude'."