Lee Daniels may not be a household name — which he should be — but the movies that this filmmaker has directed certainly are: Monster’s Ball, the award-winning saga that earned Halle Berry and the black community the first African American Oscar for Best Actress; and Precious, the difficult-to-digest tale of a morbidly obese and abused teenager waddling through a thundershower of pain and mistreatment to find her identity in New York City’s urban jungle. With his greatly enhanced Hollywood profile, Lee has leveraged his cache through his public-service work includes PSAs encouraging young African-Americans to vote, a project encouraged and supported by then-President Bill Clinton.
