Celebrity Biographies
Diahan Carroll
Nominated for an Oscar for best actress, in 1975, for “Claudine”, she won the Golden Globe as the lead in “Julia”, and was present in other television hits such as “Dynasty”. Diahann Carroll died on October 4, 2019, at the age of 84, in Los Angeles, as confirmed by Suzanne Kay, her daughter. “An icon. One of the all-time greats. She blazed trails through dense forests and elegantly left diamonds along the way for the rest of us to follow. Extraordinary life. Thank you Miss Carroll,” he wrote. on social networks the director Ava DuVernay, responsible for “Selma”.
Born in the New York Bronx, on July 17, 1935, Carol Diahann Johnson began as a model at the age of fifteen, posing for Ebony magazine. After studying Sociology at New York University, she won the Chance of a Lifetime television contest, which served as a springboard for the world of cinema. She appeared as a supporting character in Otto Preminger’s musicals Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess .
Diahann Carroll l is often remembered as the first African-American to star in a television series. She was preceded by Ethel Waters , who gave life to a maid in Beulah , a 1950s comedy. But she made history because in Ella Julia she played another main character, who did not work as a servant. Although the comedy was a hit, some critics argued that it did not paint a realistic picture of women. “That was not true,” she recalled in an interview. “Precisely, many elements were based on my own life, and on my family.”
Divorced from the audiovisual producer Monte Kay, with whom she had her only daughter, she was later united with several men, including the singer and actor Vic Damone .
On Broadway, she triumphed with the Richard Rodgers musical No Strings , for which she won a Tony as an American high fashion model who lives a love affair with a white writer in Paris. On film, her best work was Claudine , where she played a single mother who falls in love with a Harlem garbage man ( James Earl Jones ). For this feature film she was nominated for an Oscar for best actress.
She was already a bit forgotten when she was recruited for Dynasty , one of the most successful soap operas of the 80s. She gave life to the glamorous Dominique Deveraux, always facing Alexis Carrington, a villain played by Joan Collins . With the arrival of the 21st century, she gave life to the mother of the surgeon Preston Burke ( Isaiah Washington ) in Grey’s Anatomy . She said goodbye to the cinema with the unknown action by-product The Masked Saint , from 2016.