Born January 2, 1968, He is an actor and recipient of an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Emmy nomination.
After his breakthrough role as Tre Styles in Boyz n the Hood (1991), he appeared in A Few Good Men (1992), The Tuskegee Airmen (1995), Outbreak (1995), and Jerry Maguire (1996), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
He gained later fame for his roles in Men of Honor (2000) as Carl Brashear, and in Michael Bay's World War II epic Pearl Harbor (2001) as Doris Miller. His other films include As Good as It Gets (1997), What Dreams May Come (1998), Rat Race (2001), The Fighting Temptations (2003), American Gangster (2007), Gifted Hands (2009), Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013), and Selma (2014) as civil rights attorney Fred Gray. He also provided the voice of Buck the Horse in the animated feature film Home on the Range (2004).
In 2016, he portrayed O. J. Simpson in the FX drama series The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, receiving a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.
Gooding’s mother, Shirley Sullivan, is a singer, and his father, Cuba Gooding Sr., was the lead vocalist of soul group The Main Ingredient.
Gooding is a brother to actor Omar Gooding. His family moved to Los Angeles in 1972 after his father's music group had their hit single "Everybody Plays the Fool".