Ananda Lewis
| Ananda Lewis | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
March 21, 1973 Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Occupation | Television personality, model, social activist |
Ananda Lewis (born March 21, 1973) is an American television personality, model and social activist. She was an MTV veejay from the late 1990s until 2001, when she left the network to host her own broadcast syndicated television talk show, The Ananda Lewis Show.
Lewis was born on March 21, 1973, in Los Angeles, California. She is of African American and Native American descent, specifically of the Creek and Blackfoot tribes. Her name means "bliss" in Sanskrit. Lewis's mother worked as an account manager for Pacific Bell, and her father as a computer-animation specialist. Her sister, Lakshmi, is a physician. Lewis's parents divorced when Ananda was two years old, and her mother moved with her daughters to San Diego, California, to be near her own mother. Her mother took an extended trip to Europe to escape the pain of her failed marriage, leaving Ananda and Lakshmi with their grandmother. During her absence, which lasted less than a year, Lewis felt abandoned. She states:
"It was like she nurtured me and carried me in her womb and then completely left."
Lewis often fought with her mother while growing up and rarely saw her father, who had remarried. Lewis and her grandmother also frequently "locked horns" while she was growing up.
Lewis struggled with a speech impediment, stuttering until she was eight years old. In grade school she earned a reputation for outspokenness; her comments provoked her teachers' ire or, less often, their amusement. In 1981 Lewis entered herself in the Little Miss San Diego Contest, a beauty pageant, and won. During the talent portion of the competition, Lewis performed a dance routine, which she had choreographed herself, to Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney's ballad "Ebony and Ivory." After her win, Lewis attracted the attention of a talent agent and began working in local theater productions and on television. In fourth grade she enrolled at the San Diego School of Creative and Performance Arts (SCPA), a public magnet school, where she remained for nine years. At the age of thirteen, Lewis began volunteering as a tutor and counselor at a Head Start facility. Lewis was inspired by the work and decided to become a teacher or a psychologist, with the goal of helping young people. However, Lewis's family urged her to follow a more lucrative career path specifically law. She majored in history at Howard University, in Washington, D.C., from which she graduated, cum laude, in 1995.
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