Darnell Donerson

In a recent AP interview, Jennifer Hudson said that her family helped keep her grounded. The following is an excerpt from that interview found on Chicago’s ABC Channel 7 news website.

“My faith in God and my family, they're very realistic and very normal, they’re not into the whole limelight kind of thing, so when I go home to Chicago that's just another place that’s home,” she said. “I stand in line with everybody else, or, when I go home to my mom I’m just Jennifer. You get up and you take care of your own stuff. And I love that; I don’t like when people tell you everything you want to hear, I want to hear the truth, you know what I mean.”

In the photo, Jennifer Hudson and her mother Darnell Donerson the night that Jennifer won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as “Effie White” in “Dreamgirls.”