Beharie made her feature film debut in the
2008 film
American Violet, where she played the leading role. Also in the same year she played Sarah Ward in the American
sports film The Express: The Ernie Davis Story opposite actor
Rob Brown. In the
Lifetime movie,
Sins of the Mother (2010), Beharie portrayed Shay Hunter, a struggling university student who goes on a journey to mend her fractured relationship with her mother Nona played by
Jill Scott. In
2011, Beharie performed five original songs as a singer-songwriter opposite German actor
Ken Duken in the romantic drama
My Last Day Without You. In the Russell Leigh Sharman
film adaptation of his play
Apartment 4E, she played Piper, a troubled young woman who never leaves her apartment. Beharie played Marianne in the
Steve McQueen film
Shame, portraying a love interest of
Michael Fassbender.
Wesley Morris of
The Boston Globe praised her performance, calling her "a marvel of natural transparency". In 2013, Beharie starred as
Rachel Robinson, wife of
Jackie Robinson (played by
Chadwick Boseman), in the historical baseball feature
42. The same year, she began portraying Abbie Mills on the
Fox fantasy series
Sleepy Hollow, which is based on the 1820 short story "
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by
Washington Irving. In early 2016, Beharie departed the series, with her character dying in the series' third-season finale, the episode entitled "Ragnarok", which was aired April 8, 2016. She later stated that an
autoimmune disease was one of the causes of her exit and also revealed that she struggled to find work and was labelled as problematic after her departure from the show. In 2020, she starred in
Miss Juneteenth, a film about a former pageant winner preparing her teenage daughter to assume her former crown. Her performance in the series earned her a nomination for the
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. In September 2025, it was announced that Beharie was signed on to the Netflix's crime drama series adaptation
All the Sinners Bleed, based on the
eponymous novel by
S.A. Cosby. The series begins filming in Georgia in early November. == Filmography ==