Sanaa Lathan
American actress

Sanaa McCoy Lathan (; born September 19, 1971) is an American actress. She is the daughter of actress Eleanor McCoy and film director Stan Lathan. Her career began after she appeared in the shows In the House, Family Matters, NYPD Blue, and Moesha. Lathan later garnered further prominence after starring in the 1998 superhero film Blade, which followed with film roles in The Best Man (1999), Love & Basketball (2000), Disappearing Acts (2000), and Brown Sugar (2002).
In 2004, Lathan's performance in the Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun earned her a nomination at the Tony Awards for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Following this, she played the role of Alexa "Lex" Woods in the film Alien vs. Predator. In 2008, she landed a leading role in the film The Family That Preys by Tyler Perry. Lathan returned to theatre work in 2010, starring in the all-black performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Novello Theatre in London. She reprised her role as Robyn in the Christmas-themed sequel of The Best Man, in The Best Man Holiday (2013).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sanaa Lathan” as american actress. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american actress. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q241783. VIAF identifies the subject as 51899891. The Library of Congress control number is n2001120554. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 1998, 1999 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sanaa Lathan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.