Pinkett, whose performance is as sassy and sizzling as a Salt-N-Pepa recording, walks away with the movie." In 1994, she also starred as a title character in Doug McHenry's romantic drama Jason's Lyric (1994), opposite Allen Payne in 1995, played a convict on work release in the horror film Demon Knight (1995). She described her character, Peaches, as "raw" with "major attitude", and her acting garnered positive reviews. In 1994, Pinkett Smith acted with Keenen Ivory Wayans in the action and comedy film A Low Down Dirty Shame. (1991) and 21 Jump Street (1991), and earned a role on comedian Bill Cosby's NBC television sitcom A Different World in 1991, as college freshman Lena James. She received guest roles in television shows such as Doogie Howser, M.D. Pinkett began her acting career in 1990, when she starred in an episode of True Colors. After graduation, she spent a year at the North Carolina School of the Arts. She majored in dance and theatre and graduated in 1989.
When she met Shakur, she was a drug dealer. Pinkett Smith attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, where she met and became close friends with her classmate, rapper Tupac Shakur. Pinkett Smith has shown great admiration for her grandmother, saying, "My grandmother was a doer who wanted to create a better community and add beauty to the world."
Pinkett Smith has remained close to her mother and said, "A mother and daughter's relationship is usually the most honest, and we are so close." She also added: " understood what I wanted and never stood in my way." She participated as the maid of honor in Banfield-Norris's 1998 wedding to Paul Jones, a telecommunications executive. Banfield noticed her granddaughter's passion for the performing arts and enrolled her in piano, tap dance, and ballet lessons. Banfield-Jones raised Pinkett with the help of her own mother, Marion Martin Banfield, a Jamaican-born social worker. Banfield-Jones, who during the 2010s became Adrienne Banfield-Norris, became pregnant in high school the couple married but divorced after several months. Her parents are Adrienne Banfield-Jones, the head nurse of a Baltimore inner-city clinic, and Robsol Pinkett Jr., who ran a construction company. From 2003 to 2005 she resided with her uncle Thomas Pickett outside Jackson, Mississippi. Pinkett Smith is of Jamaican and Bajan descent on her mother's side and African-American descent on her father's side.
Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021. In 2018, Pinkett Smith began co-hosting the Facebook Watch talk show Red Table Talk, for which she has received a Daytime Emmy Award from seven nominations. She is best known for her roles in A Different World (1991–1993), The Nutty Professor (1996), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Matrix Revolutions (2003), Gotham (2014–2017) and Girls Trip (2017). Jada Koren Pinkett Smith ( / ˈ dʒ eɪ d ə ˈ p ɪ ŋ k ɪ t/ née Pinkett born September 18, 1971) is an American actress, screenwriter, and producer.