Kasi Lemmons
| Kasi Lemmons | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Karen Lemmons February 24, 1961 St. Louis, Missouri, United States |
| Occupation | Actress, film director |
| Years active | 1979–present |
| Spouse(s) | Vondie Curtis-Hall (1995–present); 2 children |
Kasi Lemmons (born Karen Lemmons; February 24, 1961) is an American film director and actress, most notable for her work on the films Eve's Bayou, The Caveman's Valentine and Talk to Me. She was described by film scholar Wheeler Winston Dixon as "an ongoing testament to the creative possibilities of film".
Lemmons was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of a poet/psychotherapist mother and a biology teacher father. When Lemmons was eight years old, her parents divorced, and she and her mother and two sisters moved to Newton, Massachusetts. Her mother remarried when she was nine. Her passion for movies came at an early age, but becoming a director was her goal. "I wanted to do something more meaningful than going to auditions…”.
In 1979, Lemmons made her acting debut in the television movie 11th Victim (1979). She performed with the Boston Children's Theater and later attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts but transferred to UCLA to major in history. She eventually left UCLA and enrolled in the film program at the New School for Social Research. As a young child, she got her first role on TV on a local soap opera called You Got a Right, a courtroom drama. She played the first and only black girl who integrated to an all-white school. Her acting credits include episodic parts on shows like As the World Turns, Murder, She Wrote, The Cosby Show or ER and films such as Spike Lee's School Daze (1988), Vampire's Kiss (1988), the Academy Award winner for Best Picture The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Candyman (1992), Hard Target (1993), Fear of a Black Hat (1993), Gridlock'd (1997) and 'Til There Was You (1997).
...
Wikipedia