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strong>Diahann Carroll (born July 17, 1935 in New York, New
York) is an American actress and
singer.
Having appeared some of the earliest major studio films to feature
African-American casts such as Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess,
she starred in 1968's Julia,
one of
the first series on American
television to star an African
American woman in a non-stereotypical role. Later she created the role
of Dominique
Deveraux on the popular prime
time soap opera, Dynasty.
She is the recipient of numerous stage and screen awards and
nominations.
Carroll has been married four times and became the mother of a daughter
in 1960.
She is a breast cancer survivor and activist.
Career
Carroll's film debut was a supporting role in Carmen Jones (1954) as a friend of the sultry
lead character. She then starred in the Broadway musical, House
of Flowers. In 1959, she played Clara in the film version of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess,
but
her character's singing parts were dubbed by opera singer Loulie Jean
Norman. In 1962 she won the Tony Award for best
actress (a first for a black
woman) for the role of Barbara Woodruff in the Samuel A.
Taylor and Richard Rodgers musical
No
Strings. In 1974 she
was nominated for an Academy
Award for Best Actress for Claudine.
Carroll is best known for her title role in the 1968 television
series Julia,
which
made her the first African American actress to star in her own television
series where she did not play a
domestic worker. She was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1969,
and won the Golden Globe AwardBest Actress In A Television Series†in 1968.[2] Her first Emmy nomination had come in 1963 for Naked
City. Some of her other earlier work included appearances on
shows
hosted by Jack Paar, Merv
Griffin, Johnny Carson, Judy
Garland and Ed Sullivan, and on The Hollywood
Palace variety
show. for
In 1984, Carroll joined the nighttime soap opera Dynasty as the jetsetterDominique
Deveraux, half-sister of Blake Carrington played by actor John
Forsythe. Her high profile role on Dynasty also reunited her
with
actor Billy Dee
Williams, who briefly played her onscreen husband Brady Lloyd.
Carroll
remained on the show until 1987, simultaneously making several
appearances on
its short-lived spinoff, The
Colbys.
She received her third Emmy nomination in 1989 for the recurring role
of
Marion Gilbert in A
Different World. In 2006,
she appeared in the television medical drama Grey's
Anatomy as Jane Burke, the
demanding mother of Dr. Preston Burke.
Carroll starred as the crazed silent movie star Norma Desmond in the Canadian production of Andrew Lloyd
Webber's musical version of the classic film Sunset
Boulevard.
In December 2008, Carroll was cast in the pilot for USA Networks's
series,
White Collar.[3]
Carroll will be featured in UniGlobe Entertainment's breast cancer
docudrama
entitled, 1 a Minute,
scheduled for release in 2010.[4]
Personal life
Carroll has had four marriages, the first of which produced a
daughter,
Suzanne Kay Bamford (born 1960), who became a freelance media
journalist.
In 1973, Carroll surprised the press by marrying Las Vegas boutique
owner
Fred Glusman. She and British television host and producer David
Frost had been dating at
the time, and were actually engaged. Several weeks later, she filed for
divorce,
charging Glusman with physical abuse. In 1975, she married Robert
DeLeon, a
managing editor of Jet magazine. She was widowed two years
later when DeLeon was killed in a car crash.[5] Carroll's fourth and last marriage was to singer Vic Damone in 1987.
The union, which Carroll
admitted was turbulent, saw a legal separation in 1991, a
reconciliation, and
finally divorce in 1996.[6][7]
As a breast cancer activist and survivor, she invited a camera crew into her treatment room
for a
national broadcast special to draw attention to the disease.