B-13 Peer Review: The Most Beautiful and Under-rated Entertainers Living 60 and Over
For more than 50 years, actress and singer Diahann Carroll has been
breaking barriers. She was the first black woman to win a Tony for best
actress, and the first black woman to star in her own TV show — while
not playing a maid. As the title character in that sitcom, Julia, Carroll became the model for one of the first black Barbie dolls.These days, Carroll is still elegant, still headstrong and still able to turn heads with those illustrious legs, though the title of her new memoir might suggest otherwise: The Legs Are the Last to Go: Aging, Acting, Marrying and Other Things I Learned the Hard Way.
"I'm going to admit I'm very proud of them," Carroll says, laughing, in a conversation with NPR's Michele Norris. "They are holding up amazingly well."
The book's cover features Carroll in a director's chair, her legs crossed and outstretched. She looks relaxed, but the preparations for the photo shoot were anything but.
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| Now 83 Years |
"I was almost twice the size the day that I took the pill," Carroll says. She also says she was "a little anxious about the body, as one is when people have been talking about your body for 50-some-odd years."
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We may or may not all get the chance to see 93 in the grand fashion that Tyson has, but we can all learn something from the honorable way she’s lived her life. Check out some tips to living your best life at any age, particularly your 90s, from the Broadway and film icon.
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| Now 93 Years |
Angela Bassett first attended the Jordan Park Elementary School and then Disston MIddle School, Azalea Middle School subsequently. Later on, she joined at Boca Ciega High School where she was a cheerleader as well as a member of the Upward Bound college prep program.
She completed her education from the Yale University with B.A. degree in African-American studies. Having an interest in being an actress, she began to focus on acting right after her graduation.
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| Now 60 Years |
Till date, she did many noteworthy films including Malcolm X and Boyz n the Hood. She even won an Academy and a Golden Globe Award for the portrayal of Tina Turner in the film What's Love Got
She even lent her voice for the television show “The Simpsons” as the First Lady Michelle Obama. In 2008, she was awarded the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame Star.
Apart from acting she also produced and directed numbers of films comprising, Whitney, American Horror Story: Roanoke, American Horry Story: Cult, Our America, The Rosa Parks Story, Remand and so on. More recently, she has made an appearance in the films Black Panther, and Mission Impossible. Besides, she is still working on the television series, 9-1-1.
Lynn Whitfield was born on 06-05-1953 in Baton Rouge in the state of Louisiana, United States. She is an American Film Actress, Film Producer & Television Actress.
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| Now 65 Years |
She started her career in theatre and television first, and then she started to appear in the films. Her first screen debut was NBC serial drama “Hill Street Blues” in 1981 in which she played the character of Jill Thomas. Then she appeared in “Doctor Detroit” a comedy movie in the year 1983. Her film works include The Slugger’s Wife, Silverado, Jaws: The Revenge, The George McKenna Story etc.
Her most popular and recognisable role is in “The Josephine Baker
Story” in the year 1991. Her one of the highest grossing film is dark
romantic comedy movie “A Thin Line Between Love and Hate” in 1996. She
acted in many films in her acting career which made her achieve many
awards and gain her wide recognition and popularity in the film
industry.
Her achievements include Primetime Emmy Award in the category of
outstanding lead actress in Miniseries or movie. She was also honoured
with Golden Globe Award for her outstanding performance in The Josephine
Baker Story.
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Vanessa Bell Calloway is an
American actress who has played role in a number of films like Biker
Boyz, Love Don’t Cost a Thing, Coming to America, What’s Love Got to Do
with it, shameless and Cheaper by the Dozen. She has appeared in What's
Love Got to Do with It (1993), The Inkwell (1994), Crimson Tide (1995),
and Daylight (1996). She had the recurring roles on the tv series such
as Hawthorne and Shameless.
Vanessa Bell Calloway's net worth is $600 thousand at present. She has earned a decent amount of salary in her career.
She was born on March 20, 1957, in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. She is a stage and screen actress having tremendous staying power.
She attended and received Bachelors’s of
Fine Arts Degree from Ohio University. She learned to dance from Alvin
Ailey, George Faison, and Otis Sallid.
Calloway started her career as a dancer
in Michael Bennett’s Broadway production of Dreamgirls. She first began
her acting from All My children in 1982. She also appeared in different
shows as guest roles like in Falcon Crest, 1st & Ten, L.A. Law, A Different World, etc.
In 1995 she co-starred opposite Joe
Morton and James Earl Jones for CBS’s drama Under One Roof. She played
many TV Series and got famous as well. She also appeared in different
films behind TV series and Stage.
She made her film debut from a comedy
movie Coming to America as Eddie Murphy’s subservient bride-to-be which
hit the box office that year. She also appeared in What’s Love Got to
Do with it opposite Angela Bassett in 1995, Crimson Tide with Denzel
Washington and Gene Hackman in 1995, and Lakeview Terrace with Samuel L.
Jackson in 2008.
She has also shown her versatility as writer, creator and executive producer for a reality TV show that aired on TV ONE.
She has been nominated for NAACP Image
Award in many years. In 1996 she was first nominated for Outstanding
Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Under One Roof, in 1997.
She was nominated for America’s Dream,
in 1998 she was nominated for Orleans and in 1999 she was nominated for
The Temptations. She has also been nominated as Outstanding Supporting
Actress in a Drama Series in 2002 for Boston Public and in 2004 for The
District.
Vanessa is 57 years of old in age. She
is 5.5 ft tall in height. She has brown-dark hair color. She is black
and has sexy legs. Her star sign is Pisces. She is a Christian.
Vanessa’s husband is an
anesthesiologist, Dr. Anthony Calloway whom she get married in 1988. Her
daughters are Ashley and Ally. Her daughter Ashley is one of the
actresses of the BET series Baldwin Hills.
Vanessa and her husband host a
Thanksgiving dinner for homeless people every year. Vanessa is also a
member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.
Vanessa was diagnosed with Ductal
carcinoma in situ (DCIS) at the age of 52, which showed the presence of
abnormal cells inside a milk duct in her right breast. Then she went for
reconstructive surgery which went successfully. Vanessa told about her
breast cancer survivor journey to “theGrio”.
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| Now 61 Years |
Sheryl Lee Ralph, then a future singer and actress, was born on 30th December in the year 1956. She was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, to Stanley and Ivy Ralph. Her parents worked as a college professor and a fashion designed respectively. The mother of Sheryl Lee Ralph had Afro-Jamaican roots, while her father was of an African-American descent. Even though the future actress was born in Connecticut, she spent her childhood mostly in Jamaica’s Mandeville and Long Island.
Ralph attended Uniondale High School, a school in the suburbs of New York. At Uniondale Ralph starred in a high-school production of the musical Oklahoma!, portraying Ado Annie. Before graduating in 1972, she won the title of, Miss Black Teen-age New York. Later, she graduated from the Rutgers University at the age of 19, earning her the title of the youngest woman who graduated from that university. While attending Rutgers, during her time at Rutgers, Ralph was one of the earliest winners of the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarships awarded by the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. Also that year she was named one of the top ten college women in America by Glamour magazine. Initially she hoped to study medicine, but after dealing with cadavers in a pre-med class and winning a scholarship in a competition at the American College Theater Festival, she gave up medicine for the performing arts.
Though primarily a star of Broadway musicals, Sheryl Lee Ralph actually launched her career in the Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby feature film A Piece of the Action (1977). The beautiful African-American singer/dancer made her Great White Way debut in the musical Reggae (1980). On stage, Ralph is most famous for her Tony-nominated portrayal of Deena Jones in the popular show Dreamgirls (1981). In 1978, Ralph made her television debut on The Kroft Komedy Hour. She has subsequently co-starred in a few series, including NBC's short-lived Foxfire (1985) and ABC's New Attitude (1990). Fans of the sitcom Designing Women will recognize Ralph for her over-the-top portrayal of Meschach Taylor's ex-Vegas showgirl wife Etienne Toussiant Bouvier. Her other films include The Distinguished Gentleman (1992) and Bogus (1996).
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| Now 62 Years |
Pam Grier is best known for acting in many "blaxploitation" films in the 1970s. (Honorable Mention)
Actress. Pamela Suzette Grier was born on May 26, 1949, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Her mother was a nurse and her father was a mechanic in the United States Air Force. Due to her father's job, the family moved around from base to base often during Grier's childhood, including spending several years in England, before settling down in Denver, Colorado, after her father left the military. Raised in a strict, conservative household, Grier says that she was raised with a rural sensibility, learning to "sleep in a tent at night in the rain and go fish for your food in the morning." And growing up in a rough working-class Denver neighborhood, she also learned to stand up for herself. "Denver was tough," Grier recalls. "That was where I learned you had to fight all the time. I mean fight for your lunch money or act like you didn't have any. I used to keep mine in my sock.
It was pretty rough for a kid who had been sheltered on Air Force bases, but I am a quick study."
Growing up, Grier was a good student who dreamed of becoming a doctor. "When I was a young girl, I never thought of acting," she remembers. "I never thought of television, of fans, movie stars, signing autographs. It never crossed my mind."
Only very recently, in her 2010 memoir Foxy: My Life in Three Acts, did Grier reveal that she also silently endured two incidents of sexual assault. She was raped by a group of older students when she was only six years old, and at the age of 18 she was the victim of a date rape. Fearing repercussions on her family, Grier never said a word to anyone about either incident until she sat down to write her memoirs as an adult. "I wanted others out there to understand the emotional trauma that is involved in sexual aggression and abuse and that not all of us get over it or even survive the abuse," she says about her decision to finally reveal the incidents. "I have that opportunity to speak about this as the icon—the object and let others know that in spite of it all, I am still here."
In 1967, Grier entered the Colorado state competition for the Miss Universe Beauty Pageant and placed third. She then entered another beauty contest at a Colorado Springs hotel where she was spotted by agent Dave Baumgarten, who invited her to travel to Hollywood to try her hand at acting. After initially declining, Grier eventually decided to accept the offer at the encouragement of her mother. "What can you lose?" her mother asked her. "You can always go back to school. Why don't you try it?" Grier moved to Los Angeles and enrolled in acting classes while working as a switchboard operator for American International Pictures to pay the bills. Grier then made her big screen debut at the age of 22 as one of several sexy inmates in the 1971 film Big Doll House.
Following that role, Grier quickly established herself as a staple of the so-called "blaxploitation" films of the 1970s—films specifically geared toward African-American audiences that played heavily on black stereotypes. They were typically set in ghettos and featured drug dealers, pimps, and gangsters. After appearing in Hit Man (1972) and Black Mama, White Mama (1973), Grier landed her breakthrough role as the title character—"the baddest one-chick hit-squad that ever hit town"—in Coffy (1973). The next year she delivered her most iconic performance to date as a high-class prostitute out for revenge in Foxy Brown, perhaps the definitive film of the "blaxploitation" genre. In 1975, Grier scored another hit with Sheba Baby.
While Grier's films have sometimes been criticized for portraying negative black stereotypes, she insists that they served a social function by exposing the ugly elements of the black community that still existed even in the wake of the civil rights movement. "I showed this in the pictures and it was just so ugly and people saw it and said, 'Wow! That's really the way it is.' All of a sudden there was a kind of violent reaction to it."
In the 1980s, Grier broke through into a couple of mainstream blockbusters with roles opposite Paul Newman in Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981) and opposite Steven Seagal in Above the Law (1988). However, despite roles in TV series such as Crime Story (1986-1988) and Miami Vice (1985-1990) and an appearance opposite Jack Nicholson in Mars Attacks (1996), by the late 1990s Grier appeared to have passed the heyday of her career. Then, in 1997, Quentin Tarantino chose Grier to play the titular role in his acclaimed film Jackie Brown. Portraying a flight attendant caught up in a crime scheme, Grier received rave reviews and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress for her performance. Propelled by Jackie Brown, Grier enjoyed a late-career revival on the TV series The L Word (2004-2009) and Smallville (2010).
Grier has never been married and does not have children. She has previously been involved in high-profile relationships with basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and comedian Richard Pryor.
Grier will be best remembered as the leading heroine of the "blaxploitation" film genre of the 1970s. Grier's characters always stood out as empowered black women who relied on nothing but their own strength to achieve their goals. As one film producer put it, "She exists in the American imagination in a way that is permanent. She represents a self-reliant, dynamic female figure that doesn't have to forgo femininity for potency, for militant power." Grier has said that her philosophy is to pour her all into every character regardless of the size of the role or the overall tenor of the film—a lesson she learned by reading about the famed Russian theater director Constantin Stanislavski. "He said there's no such thing as a small role, there's no such thing as a small heart," she recalls. "He said I should approach any role as if it's my life, and that's what I did."
| Now 69 Years |
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