Vanessa L Williams

Early life

Williams was born in 1963 in the Bronx, New York, with a birth announcement that read: "Here she is: Miss America." Later in life, she participated in a DNA test that revealed her ancestry: 23% from Ghana, 17% from the British Isles (specifically English, Welsh and Irish), 15% from Cameroon, 12% Finnish, 11% Southern European, 7% Togo, 6% Benin, 5% Senegal and 4% Portuguese.

Her maternal great-great grandfather was William A. Feilds, an African American legislator in the Tennessee House of Representatives. Her mother, Helen Tinch, met her father, Milton Augustine Williams Jr. (1935-2006), while both were music education students at Fredonia State Teachers College in the late 1950s. They both became elementary school music teachers after marriage, though their teaching positions were in separate districts. Milton also served as the Assistant Principal of his school for an extended period of time.

Williams and her younger brother Chris (who would later become an actor) grew up in a predominantly white middle-class suburb of New York City. Williams believes that she may have been the first African American student to go from the first grade to the 12th grade in the Chappaqua Central School District.

Education

As the child of music teachers, Williams grew up in a musical household, studying classical and jazz dance, french horn, piano, and violin. She was offered the Presidential Scholarship for Drama to attend Carnegie Mellon University during the college application period, (one of 12 students to receive it) but decided instead to attend Syracuse University on a different scholarship. Thus, in 1981, Williams joined Syracuse's College of Visual and Performing Arts, Department of Drama as a musical theater major. She stayed at Syracuse through her sophomore year, until she was crowned Miss America 1984 in September 1983.

Twenty-five years later in May 2008, Syracuse granted Williams a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. According to Syracuse News, "Williams earned the remaining credits for her degree through industry experience and her substantial performances on stage and screen." Williams also delivered the 2008 convocation address, telling Syracuse seniors to "treasure this moment. These days are irreplaceable and are the beginning of the rest of your life."

Miss America

Williams initially gained recognition as the first African American woman to win the title of Miss America when she was crowned Miss America 1984 in September 1983. Several weeks before the end of her reign, however, a scandal arose when Penthouse magazine bought and published unauthorized nude photographs of Williams. Williams was pressured to relinquish her title, and was succeeded by the first runner-up, Miss New Jersey 1983, Suzette Charles. Thirty-two years later, in September, 2015 Williams served as head judge for the Miss America 2016 pageant. At the beginning of the event, Miss America CEO Sam Haskell made a public apology to Williams for what was said to her during the events of 1984.

Music career and awards

A few years after resigning from the Miss America pageant, Williams debuted as a singer with the 1988 album The Right Stuff. The album contained the singles, The Right Stuff", which reached the #1 spot on Hot Dance Songs, and "Dreamin'which was #1 on R&B and No. 8 on Billboard Hot 100. Her second studio album, The Comfort Zone in 1991, topped the Billboard R&B Album Chart, and contained the Billboard Hot 100 number-one hit "Save the Best for Last." In addition, in 1995 she recorded "Colors of the Wind", which won the Oscar for Best Original Song (from the Disney animated feature film Pocahontas) and reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Television roles

Williams' first television appearance was on a 1984 episode of The Love Boat. She subsequently made guest appearances on a number of shows, including T.J. Hooker, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Saturday Night Live, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, LateLine, MADtv, Ally McBeal and Boomtown. Her appearances in television movies and miniseries include Perry Mason: The Case of the Silenced Singer and The Jacksons: An American Dream as Suzanne de Passe. In 1995, Williams starred as Rose Alvarez in a television adaptation of the 1960 Broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie. She played the nymph Calypso in the 1997 Hallmark Entertainment miniseries The Odyssey, starring Armand Assante. She appeared as Ebony Scrooge the Ebenezer Scrooge character in an update of Charles Dickens' story A Christmas Carol called A Diva's Christmas Carol. In 2001, Williams starred in the Lifetime cable movie about the life of Henriette DeLille, The Courage to Love. In 2003, Williams read the narrative of Tempie Herndon Durham from the WPA slave narratives in the HBO documentary Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives. In early 2006 she starred in the short-lived UPN drama South Beach. She also provides the voice for the main character in the PBS Kids version of Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies. In 2012, she starred in the ABC supernatural drama series 666 Park Avenue.

In 2006, Williams received considerable media attention for her comic/villainess role as former model/magazine creative director turned editor-in-chief Wilhelmina Slater in the ABC comedy series Ugly Betty. Her performance on the series resulted in a nomination for outstanding supporting actress at the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards and in 2008 and 2009, she was nominated in the outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series category for Ugly Betty. Williams next joined the cast of Desperate Housewives for its seventh season where she portrayed Renee Perry, an old college friend/rival of Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman). In 2015, Williams joined the seventh season of The Good Wife as self-made businesswoman Courtney Paige and the love interest for Alan Cumming's character, Eli Gold. She based her interpretation of Paige on American business woman, Mellody Hobson, whom she studied through Hobson's TED talk's.

Feature film roles

Williams has appeared in a number of films including the 1997 feature film, Soul Food, for which she won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture. In 2007, she starred in the independent film My Brother, for which she won Best Actress honors at the Harlem International Film Festival, the African-American Women in Cinema Film Festival, and at the Santa Barbara African Heritage Film Festival. She also notably co-starred with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Eraser,Samuel L. Jackson in the 2000 remake of Shaft, the characters from Sesame Street in The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (as the Queen of Trash), and with Miley Cyrus in Hannah Montana: The Movie.

Theatrical roles

Williams broadened her ascendant music career into a theatrical role when she was cast in the Broadway production of Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1994. She was also featured in the Tony-nominated and Drama Desk Award nominated performance as the Witch in Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods in a revival of the show in 2002, which included songs revised for her.

Other notable theatrical roles include her performances in Carmen Jones at the Kennedy Center, the off-Broadway productions of One Man Band and Checkmates, and the New York City Center's Encores! Great American Musicals in Concert, St. Louis Woman. In 2010, Williams starred in a new Broadway musical revue entitled Sondheim on Sondheim, a look at Stephen Sondheim through his music, film and videotaped interviews. Sondheim ran from March 19 to June 13 at Studio 54 in New York City. Williams also starred as Jessie Mae Watts in the Horton Foote play The Trip to Bountiful,based on the 1985 movie of the same name. Williams was also a special guest star in the Broadway musical After Midnight.

Other media appearances

Williams has appeared in advertisements for RadioShack. She is a spokesmodel for Proactiv Solution, and was the first African-American spokesmodel for L'Oreal cosmetics in the late 1990s. Her other media appearances include endorsing Crest Rejuvenating Effects Toothpaste, endorsing Disneyland and Universal Studios in a VisitCalifornia advertisement for British and Irish television in 2008, and hosting the 6th Annual 2008 TV Land Awards show.

She appeared on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in 2000 as a contestant, and once again on August 10, 2009, as a celebrity guest during the show's 10th anniversary prime-time special editions, winning $50,000 for her charity. In a commercial that began running during Super Bowl XLVI in 2012, Williams voiced the new character Ms. Brown, a brown M&M.

Name conflict

Williams is most often referenced and publicly recognized simply as "Vanessa Williams". There is, however, occasional confusion with similarly named actress Vanessa A. Williams, who is just two months younger. It has been reported that Williams first became aware of Vanessa A. in the 1980s when her New York University registrar told her that another, similarly aged student with the same name and from the same state had applied. When Williams appeared as Miss America in a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Vanessa A. accidentally received her check for the appearance, which she returned.

In the area of acting, the two ran into name conflict when Screen Actors Guild rules prohibited duplicate stage naming. Vanessa A. had registered the name "Vanessa Williams" first, so as a compromise, Williams was occasionally credited as "Vanessa L. Williams" in acting credits. To compound the confusion, both actresses starred in versions of the drama Soul Food (Williams in the film version, and Vanessa A. in its TV series adaptation). The Screen Actors Guild eventually took the issue to arbitration and decided that both actresses could use the professional name "Vanessa Williams".

Personal life

Williams has been married three times. She married her first husband, Ramon Hervey II, in 1987 just a few years after giving up her crown, and gave birth to her first child at this time (Hervey, who is ten years older than Williams, is a public relations specialist who was hired to resuscitate her career after her resignation as Miss America in July 1984). She was the major breadwinner during the marriage which lasted for 10 years until 1997. Hervey also ceased to be her manager during the marriage. After the divorce, Williams expressed respect for him. They have three children: Melanie, Jillian Hervey, and Devin. Jillian, following in her mother's footsteps, released her first single with the duo Lion Babe in 2012.

Two years later in 1999, Williams married NBA basketball player Rick Fox. They had a daughter in May 2000. After The National Enquirer published pictures of Fox kissing and hugging another woman in mid-2004, Fox's representative announced that the couple had been "headed toward divorce" for over a year. A few months later in August 2004, Fox filed for divorce from Williams. Their split was amicable, and they later worked together on Ugly Betty.

She met her third husband, Jim Skrip, ten years later. Williams married Skrip, a businessman, from Buffalo, New York, on July 4, 2015. She announced her engagement during a 2014 taping of The Queen Latifah Show.

Williams and her mother, Helen, co-authored a memoir entitled You Have No Idea, published in April 2012. In the book, Williams discusses her childhood, rise to fame, and personal struggles, including the fact that she was sexually molested by a woman when she was 10 years old. She also spoke candidly about having an abortion while she was in high school. Williams is a supporter of gay rights and same sex marriage and in 2011, she participated in a HRC campaign entitled “New Yorkers for Marriage Equality". She is also a supporter of The San Miquel Academy of Newburgh, a school for boys at risk.

Additional reading and viewing