Photo: Mark Seliger for New York Magazine For the past 25 years, Taraji P. Henson has specialized in a specific type of character. She is usually a mother, or mother figure, facing a crisis. She may be tough, but she has a redeeming effect on others — whether they’re a philandering man-child ( Baby Boy ), an adoptee aging in reverse ( The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ), or a trio of feuding record-label scions ( Empire ). She is “the moral compass,” the 55-year-old actress told me in April