Queen Latifah earns star on Hollywood Walk of Fame

The 35-year-old diva was given a star just nine days before the opening of her new film Last Holiday.

Movie star and hip-hop diva Queen Latifah, who won an Oscar nomination for her role in the musical

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Chicago

, earned a coveted place on Hollywood's prestigious Walk of Fame on Wednesday.

The 35-year-old Grammy-winning entertainer was awarded the 2,298th bronze-edged star on the famed stretch of pavement along Los Angeles' Hollywood Boulevard just nine days before the opening of her new film Last Holiday.

The star was unveiled at a ceremony presided over by Hollywood's honorary "mayor" Johnny Grant in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre, one of Tinseltown's famed 1920s-era grandiose cinemas, dubbed picture palaces.

Queen Latifah received a best supporting actress Academy Award nomination in 2003 for her portrayal of the merciless prison matron Mama Morton in best picture laureate Chicago and a Grammy in 1994 for best solo rap performance for U.N.I.T.Y.

In , she plays a shy cookwear saleswoman who undergoes a metamorphosis on a dream European vacation after being told she is terminally ill.

Born Dana Elaine Owens, the actress chose to call herself Latifah, a Muslim name meaning delicate and sensitive, as a child, but she remains a devout Christian.

She started her rap career beatboxing for the group Ladies Fresh and rose to the pinnacle of the male-dominated business after the launch of her first album All Hail the Queen in 1989.

She made her movie debut with a small role in Spike Lee's 1991 romantic drama Jungle Fever and went on to star in such hits as 2003's Bringing Down the House, opposite comic Steven Martin.