Short Biography

Diahann Carroll (born July 17, 1935) is an American actress and songstress. Carroll was born Carol Diahann Johnson in The Bronx, New York, to John Johnson and Mabel Faulk. Her family moved to the Harlem neighborhood of New York City when she was an infant. She attended Music & Art High School, along with schoolmate Billy Dee Williams. Carroll`s first film assignment was a supporting role in Carmen Jones in 1954, playing a friend of the sultry Carmen, played by Dorothy Dandridge. 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 along with Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Pearl Bailey. All singing voices were dubbed in the film, with the exception of Pearl Bailey, with opera singer Loulie Jean Norman standing in for Carroll. 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 Award for Best 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.

In 1984, Carroll joined the nighttime soap opera Dynasty as the jetsetter Dominique 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, also making several appearances on its short-lived spin-off The Colbys during this time. She received her third Emmy nomination in 1989 for her recurring role as 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 in the Canadian production of Andrew Lloyd Webber`s musical version of the classic film Sunset Boulevard. She played the crazed silent movie star Norma Desmond, with the role of Joe Gillis played by Rex Smith.

Carroll has had four marriages, the first of which produced a daughter, Suzanne Kay Bamford (born 1960), who became a freelance media journalist. Carroll is a breast cancer activist and survivor, who invited a camera crew into her treatment room for a national broadcast special to draw attention to the disease.

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