*Alfre Woodard has spent five decades building one of the most respected careers in Hollywood, and she is finally pulling back the curtain on how she did it.
The veteran actress covers the June/July 2026 issue of AARP The Magazine, opening up about the mindset, the setbacks, and the family foundation that kept her going. One of her most revealing admissions involves the kinds of roles she has landed over the years. Woodard, 73, says she has stepped into parts written for someone who looked nothing like her. Her role as a judge in the 1996 crime thriller “Primal Fear” is one example. That part was originally written for a White man in his 60s.
“How do you think I have a career?” she said, adding that she has played roles meant for “a curmudgeonly, older white guy” at least five times throughout her career.
The road was not always smooth. Woodard describes stretches in her career where months would pass, sometimes nine or ten at a time, without a single audition coming her way. Agents also steered her away from certain opportunities, telling her, “Oh, Alfre, that’s not for you. It says ‘attractive young Black woman.'”
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Early discouragement also came from an unexpected source: a Black theater actress who told her point blank, “Oh honey, there’s no such thing as a Black film actress.” Woodard’s response was quiet but firm. “In my mind, I just went, Well, that’s not my reality,” she told the magazine.
Much of her resilience traces back to her father, Marion, who raised her with an unshakable sense of worth. “Nobody, no man in this world, I don’t care who it is, is better than you are,” he told her. He also made her watch the news every night as a child during the Civil Rights Movement, grounding her identity early.
Woodard’s latest project is “The Boroughs,” now streaming on Netflix. The series comes from creators and showrunners Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, the team behind “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.” Set inside a seemingly perfect retirement community, the story centers on a grieving newcomer whose monstrous encounter draws him toward a ragtag group of unexpected heroes. What they discover beneath the community’s polished surface suggests that life in their so-called golden years carries dangers none of them anticipated – and that they are each more resilient than they ever knew.
Addiss and Matthews described the creative challenge of building a world that could carry multiple tones simultaneously. “From the beginning, we knew we wanted The Boroughs to feel equal parts scary, mysterious, exciting and emotional,” they said, per Tudum.
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