The Girl With Something Extra

Photography by Joseph Sinclair.

Smart, beautiful and talented, Sanaa Lathan’s got star quality to burn.

By Lori Capullo.

Sanaa Lathan is steaming. She’s not angry; she’s just on location in New Orleans in the dead of August, and as she puts it, “It’s about a thousand degrees over here.” After a laugh, she adds, “It’s that wet heat, too, you know? There’s definitely no straight hair going on during this shoot.”

The shoot she’s referring to is the upcoming indie thriller Vipaka, co-starring Forrest Whitaker and Anthony Mackie. “It all came about last minute,” says Lathan. At the time of our conversation, the movie has only been in production for about a week, just as the first previews have come out promoting Lathan’s September release, Contagion, the action-drama about the outbreak of a deadly disease and an international team of doctors trying to deal with it. The movie also stars Laurence Fishburne (as Lathan’s fiancé), Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet and Jude Law, and is directed by Steven Soderbergh. It’s a departure from the roles most moviegoers associate Lathan with, but her career has been packed with roles and performances of almost every kind, from theater to film to TV to voiceovers, such as the one she currently does for The Cleveland Show. She’s been around—in a good way.

The 40-year-old Lathan was born in New York City. (Her first name is said to mean “brilliance” in Arabic and “work of art” in Swahili, although she was once told by a woman of mixed descent from both cultures that it means “majestic,” to which the actress says, “I’ll take that.”) Her mother was an actress and her father a producer who worked on shows such as Sanford & Son and Russell Simmons’ Def Comedy Jam. So it’s no surprise that she became a performer. “I was around it my whole life,” she says. “I was always running around backstage, going to dance classes or other creative classes.” Even so, she chose to earn a college degree before becoming a full-time actress—she has a B.A. in English and also graduated from The Yale School of Drama. “Both of my parents were in the business, so I knew firsthand how tough it is to break into,” she says. “Plus I always liked school, so I figured, let me be the best I can be and give myself an edge.”