Actress, singer, and entertainer Diahann Carroll was awarded a Metropolitan Opera scholarship to attend the High School of Music and Art in New York at the age of ten. While a sociology student in college, Carroll modeled, which led to work as a singer in nightclubs and as a TV performer. In 1954, she made her debut on Broadway (House of Flowers) and in films (in Carmen Jones). She won a Tony Award for her Broadway starring role in No Strings (1962) and later starred on the TV series Julia (1968-69), a TV breakthrough in that it was the first regular series to star (not co-star) a black actor. Carroll was nominated for a "Best Actress" Oscar for her work in Claudine (1974). She was married to actor/singer Vic Damone.
Diahann Carroll
Active - 1954 - 2016 |
Born - Jul 17, 1935 in Bronx, New York, United States |
Died - Oct 4, 2019 |
Genres - Drama, Family & Personal Relationships, Crime
Share on
Biography by AllMovie
Movie Highlights
Factsheet
- Worked as a model and nightclub singer as a teenager.
- Dropped out of college in 1954 and made her Broadway (House of Flowers) and film (Carmen Jones) debuts that same year.
- Began releasing albums in the late 1950s.
- Became the first black actress to win a Tony award for best actress (No Strings in 1962), star in a TV series (Julia in 1968) and host a variety show (The Diahann Carroll Show in 1976).
- Portrayed Dominique Devereaux in Dynasty and its spin-off, The Colbys, in the 1980s.
- Starred as the iconic Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical version of Sunset Boulevard.
- Launched a line of wigs, clothing and accessories in 1997.
- Is a breast-cancer survivor.
- Played recurring character Jane Burke on Grey's Anatomy.
- Released an autobiography (Diahann!) in 1986 and a memoir (The Legs Are the Last to Go: Aging, Acting, Marrying, and Other Things I Learned the Hard Way) in 2008.