Cuba Gooding, Jr. (born January 2, 1968, Bronx, New York, U.S.) is an American actor who was perhaps best known for his scene-stealing performance as a professional football player who is the only loyal client of a sports agent played by Tom Cruise in the blockbuster film Jerry Maguire (1996). Gooding earned an Academy Award for best supporting actor for his performance.
Gooding’s parents were both singers, and his father, Cuba Gooding, Sr., was the lead singer of the R&B group the Main Ingredient, which had a major hit in 1972 with the song “Everybody Plays the Fool.” The family moved to Los Angeles about that time, but Gooding’s father left the family two years later. Gooding began break dancing in the early 1980s, and he was one of the break-dancers who performed behind singer Lionel Richie at the closing ceremony for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. He also appeared in television commercials, and in the mid-1980s he began getting small parts on such TV shows as Hill Street Blues (1981–87) and The Bronx Zoo (1987–88). Gooding made his feature film debut in a bit part in Coming to America (1988). He won notice for his portrayal of Tre Styles, one of the lead characters in John Singleton’s debut film, Boyz n the Hood (1991). Gooding’s most notable subsequent films were A Few Good Men (1992) and Outbreak (1995), and he also appeared in the 1995 television movie The Tuskegee Airmen. Gooding’s performance in Jerry Maguire as football player Rod Tidwell, a family man who struggles to find the balance between his personal values and the expectations of his profession, brought him critical praise and a nomination for a Golden Globe Award in addition to the Oscar.
Following his award, Gooding played a variety of characters, including a gay art dealer in As Good as It Gets (1997) and the spirit guide of the character portrayed by Robin Williams in What Dreams May Come (1998). He appeared in the badly reviewed thrillers A Murder of Crows (1998) and Instinct (1999) and won praise for his performance in the lead role of the biopic Men of Honor (2000) and as heroic petty officer Dorie Miller in Pearl Harbor (2001). In 2003 he costarred with Beyoncé in the comedy The Fighting Temptations and played the mentally disabled title character in Radio.
His subsequent career consisted largely of lead roles in minor and direct-to-video films, with some notable exceptions. Gooding appeared in American Gangster (2007), portrayed neurosurgeon Ben Carson in the television movie Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (2009), costarred with Terrence Howard in the war thriller Red Tails (2012), played a worker in the White House kitchen in Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013), and portrayed civil-rights lawyer Fred Gray in Ava DuVernay’s Selma (2014). Gooding also appeared in the 2015 TV miniseries The Book of Negroes and portrayed O.J. Simpson in the acclaimed TV series The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (2016). He later cowrote, directed, and starred in Bayou Caviar (2018). In the romantic drama Life in a Year (2020), Gooding played a father whose son wants to be a rapper.
In the early 21st century, Gooding faced numerous accusations of unwanted sexual advances. In 2019 he was charged with groping a woman, and two other alleged incidents led to additional charges. In 2022 Gooding pleaded guilty to one count of forcible touching; if he followed the terms of the deal, he would receive no prison time. The actor also faced other legal difficulties. Notably, in 2020 a woman filed a civil suit against Gooding, accusing him of raping her in 2013. A default judgment was granted to the plaintiff in 2021 after Gooding failed to respond to the suit. However, that decision was later set aside.