Taraji P. Henson and her teenage son Marcell Johnson attended a celebration for leading women in Washington, D.C. on January 20, 2013 in Washington, United States.
The actress recently made the difficult decision to have her son sit out his first semester of college to show him real life and the importance of hard work. “I need him to see how real it is out here. It builds character. I told him, ‘College is like an investment. I’m investing my money in your future, and if I feel like you’re a bad investment, I’m taking my money back,” she said in an interview last year.
She added, “Even though he is privileged, he doesn’t remember the bad times when we were eating Hamburger Helper (boxed food) and peanut butter and jelly, he remembers all the good times. I don’t want to raise this privileged kid, who’s out of touch, so I made him sit out the first semester and he has to get a job. He called his grandmother, he was like, ‘It’s hard out here, it’s hard to find a job.’ So I was like, ‘Yeah, I need you to know that.’”
Photos: Bennett Raglin
