American comedian and actress Mo’Nique was BOTD in 1967. Born Monique Hicks in Woodlawn, Maryland, she studied at Morgan State University and graduated from the Broadcasting Institute of Maryland. Encouraged by her elder brother, she first performed at an open mike night at a comedy club in 1988. She became a professional stand-up comic, rising to wider national attention with appearances in TV specials Russell Simmons’ Def Comedy Jam and Comic View. After a popular guest appearance on TV sitcom Moesha, she appeared in the spin-off comedy series The Parkers, playing a feisty single mother. Her film roles included Baby Boy, Soul Plane, Lee Daniel‘s drama Shadowboxer and Phat Girls. In 2009, she co-starred in Daniels’ film Precious, based on the novel Push by Sapphire, playing the violently abusive mother of the title character. Critically praised for humanising a “bad mother” stereotype, she won a series of industry awards, including the Oscar for best supporting actress. Her subsequent film career was sparse, and she later accused Hollywood of blacklisting her after her refusal to campaign for Precious during awards season. Transitioning to television, she hosted Mo’Nique’s F.A.T. Chance, a beauty pageant for plus-sized women, the talk show The Mon’Nique Show and played singer Ma Rainey in a TV biopic of Bessie Smith. In the 2000s, she published Skinny Women Are Evil: Notes of a Big Girl in a Small-Minded World (co-written with Sherri A. McGee) and the comedy cookbook Skinny Cooks Can’t Be Trusted. She returned to film in 2024 as the star of Daniels’ horror film Deliverance. Married three times and with three children, she has spoken openly about her experiences of childhood sexual abuse, her open marriage with third husband Sidney Hicks and her sexual attraction to women.