Billie Jean King to receive Hollywood Walk of Fame star
Tennis icon Billie Jean King will be honored next week as the first female athlete with a Hollywood Walk of Fame star for sports entertainment.
The Monday event honoring King will be emceed by Ellen K, a fellow Walk of Famer and radio host. Jamie Lee Curtis and Earvin "Magic" Johnson will be guest speakers.
"As a native of Southern California, it is a dream come true," King said in a Facebook post back in June 2023.
King will be the Walk of Fame’s 2,807th star, marking the latest historic recognition the sports icon has received. She was also the first female athlete awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the first solo female athlete to hold a Congressional Gold Medal as of last year.
Since the 1960s, King has been named the No. 1 year-end tennis player in the world six times and has won a record 20 Wimbledon championships and 39 Grand Slam singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles.
Aside from her athleticism, King made a name for herself advocating for gender equality. In 1973, she called for equal prize money at the U.S. Open for both men and women, marking the first major tournament to award both sexes the same amount.
That same year, King challenged Bobby Riggs in the famous "Battle of the Sexes," a matchup she ultimately championed.
King's name has also become a symbol of women's tennis worldwide. In 2020, the women's tennis world cup was officially renamed the Billie Jean King Cup, and in 2022, President Emmanuel Macron awarded her with France's most distinguished order of merit.
The home of the U.S. Open was named the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in 2006, marking the first major sports venue to be named after a woman. She was inducted as a special contributor to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame.
While she dominated the courts, King continued to give back to her sport and community, founding the Women's Tennis Association in 1973 and the Women’s Sports Foundation the following year.
In 2014, King began her namesake foundation, using sports, education and activism to create an equitable future.
Along with being named one of Life magazine's “100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century,” the Outsports Power 100 list named King and her partner, Ilana Kloss, as the most powerful LGBTQ people in sports in 2023.
King serves as the honorary lifetime president of the Elton John AIDS Foundation and was a member of the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. In 2021, she added New York Times bestselling author to her résumé with her memoir, "All In: An Autobiography."
Other awards King has collected over the years include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards in 2018, the Laureus Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021, and the Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award the same year.
CORRECTION (April 1, 2025, 3:56 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the organization King founded in 1974. It is the Women’s Sports Foundation, not the Women’s Sports Association.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
