Nicole Beharie

Beharie was born on January 3, 1985,^[1] in West Palm Beach, Florida.^[2] When Beharie was a child, her father was in the United States Foreign Service, and she lived in the United Kingdom, Nigeria, and Panama.^[3] She attended Orangeburg Wilkinson High School in Orangeburg, South Carolina and is a 2003 graduate of the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts & Humanities.^[4] A public residential high school in Greenville. Beharie was then accepted into Juilliard School (Drama division Group 36: 2003–07).^[5] She was awarded a Shakespeare scholarship and trained in England.^[6]

Beharie made her feature film debut in the 2008 film American Violet,^[7] where she played the leading role. Also in the same year she played Sarah Ward in the American sports film The Express: The Ernie Davis Story opposite actor Rob Brown. In the Lifetime movie, Sins of the Mother (2010),^[8] Beharie portrayed Shay Hunter, a struggling university student who goes on a journey to mend her fractured relationship with her mother Nona played by Jill Scott.

In 2011, Beharie performed five original songs as a singer-songwriter opposite German actor Ken Duken in the romantic drama My Last Day Without You. In the Russell Leigh Sharman film adaptation of his play Apartment 4E, she played Piper, a troubled young woman who never leaves her apartment.^[9] Beharie played Marianne in the Steve McQueen film Shame,^[10] portraying a love interest of Michael Fassbender. Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe praised her performance, calling her "a marvel of natural transparency".^[11]

In 2013, Beharie starred as Rachel Robinson, wife of Jackie Robinson (played by Chadwick Boseman), in the historical baseball feature 42. The same year, she began portraying Abbie Mills on the Fox fantasy series Sleepy Hollow, which is based on the 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving.^[12] In early 2016, Beharie departed the series, with her character dying in the series' third-season finale, the episode entitled "Ragnarok", which was aired April 8, 2016.^[13] She later stated that an autoimmune disease was one of the causes of her exit and also revealed that she struggled to find work and was labelled as problematic after her departure from the show.^[14][15]

In 2020, she starred in Miss Juneteenth, a film about a former pageant winner preparing her teenage daughter to assume her former crown.^[15] In 2023, she joined the cast of season three of the Apple TV+ series The Morning Show.^[16] Her performance in the series earned her a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.^[17]

In September 2025, it was announced that Beharie was signed on to the Netflix's crime drama series adaptation All the Sinners Bleed, based on the eponymous novel by S.A. Cosby.^[18] The series begins filming in Georgia in early November. ^[19]