Terrence Howard Announces Retirement on Red Carpet of His Final Project

Terrence Howard fans won’t be seeing the Empire alum on the big or small screen moving forward. While at the premiere of the forthcoming Peacock series The Best Man: The Final Chapters, Howard announced his retirement from acting. While speaking with Entertainment Tonight on the red carpet, Howard told the media outlet: “This is the end for me. This is the end for me. I don’t know if it’s the end for the rest of them,” he said. “I retired two years ago, for the most part. I was done…I asked Sidney Poitier 10 years ago does he want to do any more work, and he said, ‘Why would I spend my last 10 years doing an impersonation of myself?’ And that’s what I’ve gotten to.”

Howard added: “I’ve gotten to the point where now I’ve given the very best that I have as an actor. Now I’m enjoying watching other new talent come around, and I don’t want to do an impersonation of myself. Yes, there’s some better actors out there that can do things that I was never able to do,” he continued, noting, “So, I want to applaud them, I want to be excited about what they do.”

The Best Man: Final Chapters premieres on Dec. 22. The eight-episode series is the conclusion to the previous two films, released in 1999 and 2013. The films chronicles the lives of college friends who reunite in the first for a wedding where a major secret is exposed, and the second picks up a decade later with some friendships estranged as they reunite to celebrate Christmas. 

In the series, the cast will reunite once again for Howard’s character’s wedding. The playboy of the group, no one ever expected him to settle down. The role is one of Howard’s most known.

From there, he went on to star in the critically acclaimed Hustle & Flow, Glitter, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, and several other major movies. He also starred in six seasons as the family patriarch on Empire.