Cicely Tyson Biography
Born: December 19, 1933
One of America's most respected dramatic actresses, Cicely Tyson has worked steadily as a television, film, and stage actress since making her stage debut in a Harlem YMCA production of +Dark of the Moon in the 1950s. The daughter of Caribbean immigrants, Tyson was raised in Harlem. After working as a secretary and a successful model, she became an actress, landed her first jobs in off-Broadway productions, and eventually made it to the Great White Way in the late '50s.
Tyson got her first real break in 1963, playing a secretary to George_C._Scott on the TV series East Side/West Side, and in 1966 signed on with the daytime soap The Guiding Light. That same year, she made her credited screen debut starring opposite Sammy Davis Jr. in the drama A_Man_Called_Adam (her first uncredited film role was in 1959's Odds_Against_Tomorrow). More film, television, and stage work followed, but Tyson did not truly become a star until her Oscar-nominated performance in the Depression drama Sounder (1972). An unusual beauty with delicate features, expressive black eyes, and a full, wide mouth, Tyson next hid her good looks beneath layers of old-age makeup to convincingly portray a 110-year-old former slave who tells her extraordinary life story in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974). A well-wrought effort, it won Tyson her first Emmy for her title role, which required her to age 91 years on the screen.
Tyson subsequently had great success on television, particularly with her role in the legendary miniseries Roots (1977) and her work in The Women of Brewster Place (1989). She also continued to do a fair amount of film work, appearing in films like Fried_Green_Tomatoes (1991), The_Oldest_Living_Confederate_Widow_Tells_All (1994), The_Grass_Harp (1995), and Hoodlum (1997). In 1997, Tyson again donned old woman's makeup to offer a delightfully crotchety version of Charles Dickens' Scrooge in the 1997 USA Network original production Ms._Scrooge. Two years later, she had another television success -- and another Emmy nomination -- with A_Lesson_Before_Dying, a drama set in the 1940s about a black man sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit. Sandra Brennan, Rovi
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