“Regina is an inspiring role model who will show our graduates what it looks like to live out our Jesuit values,” said Fordham President Tania Tetlow. “Her remarkable talent, strong work ethic, and unwavering commitment to justice make her the ideal speaker for our commencement ceremony. We’re thrilled to honor her.” 

Road to Hollywood

Hall has appeared in numerous hit films, including The Best Man, Love and Basketball, the Scary Movie franchise, Girls Trip, The Hate U Give, Master, and will be in the upcoming Paul Thomas Anderson movie, One Battle After Another.

But a Hollywood career wasn’t always her plan. Born in Washington D.C., Hall graduated from Fordham in 1992 with a degree in English. She was inspired to pursue acting after a personal tragedy—her father died unexpectedly of a stroke while she was in grad school studying journalism. 

“When you’re young, you don’t necessarily realize life’s brevity,” Hall told The LA Times. “It wasn’t like I didn’t want to do journalism. It was more like, you live once, life is short.”

Hall started taking acting classes and auditioning, and soon she was landing roles. 

Awards and Accolades 

Hall has appeared in many popular television series, including Ally McBeal; Law & Order: Los Angeles; Black-ish; Insecure; Nine Perfect Strangers; and Black Monday, which she co-produced. In 2022 she appeared in Peacock’s The Best Man: The Final Chapters, based on the popular Best Man film franchise. 

Hall is known for her versatility as an actress, standing out for both her comedic chops and dramatic range. BET called her performance in the megachurch dark comedy Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul a “masterclass in subtle comedy and emotional depth.” She was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an NAACP Image Award for the performance. 

For her role in the 2018 dramedy Support the Girls, in which Hall plays the manager of a sports bar, she became the first Black woman to win the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. She has also been honored with the Women’s Image Network Award for Best Supporting Actress, NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress, and more. 

In 2022, Hall hosted the 94th Academy Awards with Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes. It was the first time in history three women hosted the ceremony. 

Hall’s production company, Rh Negative, is currently developing projects on the scripted and unscripted sides of television as well as film.

Faith and Advocacy 

Throughout her life, Hall has maintained a strong connection with faith. She attended a Catholic high school before Fordham, and as an adult she’s drawn spiritual inspiration from Christianity along with Buddhism, Hinduism, and other faiths. 

“I’ve always had a relationship with God,” Hall told The Cut in 2022. “A deep and sometimes complex relationship with God has carried me through my difficult times.”

One such difficult time came in 2006 when her mother was diagnosed with scleroderma, a rare autoimmune disorder. Hall became an advocate for scleroderma research, and she now serves on the Board of Directors for the Scleroderma Research Foundation. 

Hall has also been involved with organizations including the American Red Cross, the Ronald McDonald House, Habitat for Humanity, Smiles for Speech, Solutions Project, and Just Like My Child. 

“Regina’s dedication to advocacy embodies the principles we hold dear at Fordham,” said President Tetlow. “We can’t wait to welcome her back to campus.”

On March 27, she’ll take the awards stage in a different role: co-host of the 94th Academy Awards, along with fellow actresses Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes. The ceremony, to be broadcast on ABC, will mark the first time three women have hosted the Oscars, and the first time there have been three hosts since Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn, and Paul Hogan teamed up in 1987. Among the nominees is Denzel Washington, FCLC ’77, who is up for the best actor award for his starring role in The Tragedy of Macbeth.

Hall, a Washington, D.C., native who majored in English at Fordham, began her film career with 1999’s Best Man, and since then, she has starred in movies such as Love & Basketball, the Scary Movie franchise, Girls Trip, and The Hate U Give (see below). She has also been a recurring cast member on television shows including Ally McBeal, Black Monday, Insecure, and Nine Perfect Strangers.

Now, along with her two comedic co-hosts, Hall will emcee the film industry’s biggest night, which had gone hostless since 2018. Hall previously hosted the BET Awards in 2019.

Here are five other things to know about Regina Hall:

1. She planned to be a journalist before going into acting.

After graduating from Fordham, Hall earned a master’s degree in journalism from NYU, hoping to ultimately produce segments for a news show like 60 Minutes. “One of the reasons why I pursued journalism is because I read Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, which weighed heavy on me,” she told The FADER in 2018. “It talked about the importance of journalism to democracy, and the responsibility a journalist had in what they wrote—the truth they uncovered. I thought it was such an honorable profession, and I still do … Democracy is so connected to our press.”

2. She starred in The Hate U Give, a film adaptation of the 2017 novel incoming Fordham students read and discussed last summer. 

In 2018, Hall earned a Women’s Image Network Award for her portrayal of Lisa Carter in The Hate U Give, an adaptation of a novel by Angie Thomas, the 2021 Mary Higgins Clark Chair at Fordham. The story follows Starr Carter, Lisa’s daughter, a teenage girl who is thrust into the spotlight after witnessing her unarmed Black friend killed by a police officer during a traffic stop. This past summer, incoming Fordham College at Rose Hill and Fordham College at Lincoln Center students read the novel and joined Zoom sessions where they discussed themes such as how to find your voice, working to battle racial injustice, and understanding what it means to be part of a community.

3. She pulls weeds to relieve stress.

It seems like everyone developed a pandemic hobby in the thick of 2020’s COVID-19 onset, and Hall is no different. To relieve stress, she started pulling garden weeds. “I love picking weeds. It’s very soothing,” she told Parade in August. And she’s spreading her love for the weird-but-endearing mental health hack to her co-stars, namely Samara Weaving, who Hall starred with in Hulu’s adaptation of Nine Perfect Strangers, a novel by Liane Moriarty. “She totally didn’t get it, but by the end, Samara was pulling weeds like me. She was like, ‘Regina, I can’t stop!’ I said, ‘I told you! It’s soothing.’”

4. She’s heavily influenced by—and devoted to—her parents.

Hall holds her parents in high esteem, and it’s guided her life’s trajectory—inspiring her to pursue acting and become an advocate for people with a rare autoimmune disease. Hall’s father died while she was getting her master’s degree from NYU, and it made her rethink what she wanted to do in life. “When you’re young, you don’t grasp the gravity of life. But when you lose someone and you’re young, you do,” she told The Shadow League in 2014. She realized that she wanted to act, so she began taking classes while finishing her master’s degree, which helped her break into the industry.

A decade later, in 2006, Hall’s mother, Valery, was diagnosed with scleroderma, a group of rare autoimmune diseases that can affect the skin and cause internal issues. She was put in touch with fellow actor Bob Saget, who was serving on the Scleroderma Research Foundation’s board of directors, and her advocacy journey began. “Bob had made a television movie about scleroderma years ago because his sister had died from it,” she told Ability Magazine. Hall’s mom began seeing a doctor Saget suggested, and last year Hall herself joined the foundation’s board of directors.

5. She is an ‘undeniable and brilliant force in Hollywood, both in front of and behind the camera.’

In addition to starring in the series, Hall was a co-producer of Black Monday and started her own production company, Rh Negative, which signed a first-look deal with Showtime in October 2020. That November, Rh Negative also signed a deal with ViacomCBS, with Hall to executive produce six TV films for the Paramount Network, MTV, and Comedy Central. “Regina is an undeniable and brilliant force in Hollywood, both in front of and behind the camera,” said Amy Israel, executive vice president of scripted programming for Showtime Networks, which is also part of ViacomCBS and aired Black Monday. “She is one of the most dynamic and fearless actors of our generation.” Hall also executive produced Little, a 2019 comedy co-starring Issa Rae, and Master, a thriller that will be released on March 18 on Prime Video.

—Sierra McCleary-Harris and Kelly Prinz contributed reporting to this article.