actress; singer
Personal Information
Born December 30, 1956, in Waterbury, CT; daughter of Stanley (a teacher) and Ivy (a clothing designer) Ralph; married Eric George Maurice (an exporter), December, 1990; children: Etienne Maurice.
Education: Earned B.A. from Rutgers University, mid-1970s.
Career
Actress and singer. Made first film appearance in A Piece of the Action, 1977; appeared as Deena Jones in Dreamgirls on Broadway, early 1980s; released pop album, In the Evening, 1984.
Life's Work
Sheryl Lee Ralph, best known as Moesha's television stepmom, is an accomplished actress and vocalist whose path to stardom has been occasionally blunted by the shortage of solid roles for women of color in the entertainment industry. Ralph began her career in the late 1970s, and for a time had to earn a living as a soap opera regular. In the 1990s, as color barriers began to disintegrate somewhat, Ralph has won a number of serious parts in critically acclaimed films; more importantly, as head of her own production company she is able to channel the determination that guided her through the rough days of her career into projects that will benefit other African American entertainment professionals.
Ralph was born in Connecticut in the mid-1950s but grew up in Long Island and Jamaica as a result of her parents' ties to the island nation. Her mother was a clothing designer, and her father was first a teacher and then a school administrator; both encouraged their daughter's creative as well as intellectual gifts. Ralph planned on becoming a doctor until she had to dissect a cadaver, and instead entered an American College Theater Festival competition and won a scholarship, which she used at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She earned a degree in English literature and theater when she was just 19, and moved to Los Angeles to launch her career.
Ralph was admittedly unprepared for the reality of Hollywood in the mid-1970s, where there were few roles for African American actresses. As she recalled in an interview with New York Times writer Cathryn Jakobson Ramin, film parts were for African American women seemed limited to "hooker, welfare momma, naked or dead." Ralph also reported that one casting agent told her, "You're obviously beautiful and talented, but what do I do with you? Team you up with Tom Cruise? Do you kiss him? And who comes to see this movie?," she said in the New York Times interview. Ralph did manage to land a role in a 1977 Sidney Poitier film, A Piece of the Action, and found a more hospitable climate in television, making a living with roles on sitcoms such as Sanford Arms, a sequel to Sanford & Son, and The Jeffersons.
Somewhat vanquished, Ralph headed back to the East Coast and her original love, the stage. By 1981 she had won the coveted role of Deena Jones in what would become the hugely successful Broadway musical Dreamgirls; she was cast alongside Jennifer Holliday in a Supremes-like tale of a trio of female singers who make it big in the Sixties. Ralph's performance, for which she earned comparisons to Diana Ross, landed her a Tony nomination, but did little to further her career, or much else in her life. "We spent all those hours as the toast of the town, and then, after the curtain, we'd get out on the corner--and do you think a cab would stop for us?" Ralph recalled in the New York Times interview with Ramin.
During much of the ensuing decade, Ralph continued in the theater, recorded an album--1984's In the Evening--and also pursued film roles, still with little luck. "It wasn't that I was losing parts," she explained to Ramin. "It was that there were no parts. Inside, I got so angry." She still found work in television--appearing as a regular on the ABC-TV waitressing sitcom It's a Living and winning the occasional part on shows such as L.A. Law. She also wrote Sheryl Lee Ralph's Beauty Basics, published in 1987. Finally, in 1989 Ralph was cast in The Mighty Quinn, a murder mystery which put her opposite Denzel Washington; she also performed a song on the film's soundtrack. Next, she won a choice part in the acclaimed drama To Sleep with Anger opposite Danny Glover, and starred in an ABC-TV sitcom titled New Attitude.
This period of Ralph's life also marked a personal turning point: she was married in December of 1990 to Eric Maurice, a dealer in African art and textiles whom Ralph met on the French Riviera. She had made finding a life partner one of her goals, she told Jet writer Aldore Collier, after one of her traditional New Year's Eve parties, which also marks her birthday celebration. As she recalled in the Jet interview, "...there were all of these people at my house having a good time, and they were all with somebody and I realized it was my party and I was the only person who wasn't there with somebody." She tied a string around her finger to remind her of her goal, and kept it there until it was fulfilled.
By 1992 Ralph and Maurice had married in a Caribbean ceremony and had a child together, Etienne Maurice, and she also won a role in the hit CBS-TV sitcom Designing Women as a former Vegas showgirl cast as Meshach Taylor's new bride. Again, Ralph's success represented her own particular brand of determination: she had met the show's producer, Harry Thomason, at a Democratic Party fundraiser, and in discussing the show--which revolved around a successful interior design firm in the South--told him, "'You mean to tell me after seven years you can't find a Black woman to be friends with those White women--in Atlanta?'" Ralph recalled in an interview with Essence's Joy Duckett Cain.
As the decade progressed, the rules changed somewhat as Hollywood came to realize that box-office takes reflected a cross-section of the American populace, and that films that played to certain segments might indeed be financially successful. Ralph appeared in The Distinguished Gentleman as the equally conniving cousin of Eddie Murphy, who starred as a con man suddenly elected to Congress. She also won kudos for her role in the 1992 film Mistress, in which she appeared in the title role as a formidable diva/actress romantically linked with a powerful Hollywood executive played by Robert De Niro. The following year, Ralph was cast in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, and appeared alongside former boxing great George Foreman in his sitcom George. She also appeared as Mrs. Pyrite in the 1994 film version of The Flintstones, in an HBO movie titled Witch Hunt as a Jamaican witch alongside Dennis Hopper and Eric Bogosian, and earned a role in the 1995 John Travolta film White Man's Burden.
In an interview, Ralph explained the idea behind her determination and career longevity: "The secret is truly inside yourself," she told Ebony Male in 1994. "...You've got to be in this business because you know you're the greatest thing to come along since sliced bread." Despite the change in fortunes during the 1990s, Ralph's fortitude after so many years allowed her to be choosy about the parts offered her. "There are certain roles that I will not do because I don't want my grandmother or my aunt to see me like that," she told Essence's Cain. In 1996 Ralph was cast in a pilot for a new sitcom on the UPN Network that turned out to be a runaway hit, Moesha. The show starred teen singer Brandy, and Ralph was cast to play her new stepmother.
Ralph has also launched her own production company, Island Girl, which buys, makes, and sells film and television projects. She has also become active in a number of Los Angeles charities, including the Los Angeles Children's Toy Drive, which she began with Denzel Washington and his wife. For much of the 1990s she has produced the annual concert "Divas: Simply Singing!," the proceeds from which are donated to AIDS organizations. "People always talk about giving back," she told Cain in the Essence interview. "But you have to give back even when the cameras aren't running. You have to do it when nobody's watching."
In the late 1990s Ralph busied herself with her Moesha role and her Island Girl projects, which included one script that posits what might happen if Noah's Ark had been headed by a young black woman, as well as the movie Secrets, which Ralph wrote, directed, and starred in during 1997. To take a break from such a commitment- laden schedule, Ralph confesses to frequenting the occasional spa, and told Essence in 1996 that the most important benefit she has gleaned from her visits has been learning how to relax through breathing exercises. "I also stop and take time to look around, to discover something that I haven't seen before," she told Essence.
Awards
Nominated for a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award, both 1982, for Dreamgirls.
Further Reading
Periodicals
- Ebony Male, October 1994, pp. 54-55.
- Essence, December 1993, p. 62; October 1996, p. 18.
- Jet, August 27, 1990, pp. 56-58.
- New York Times, January 3, 1993, sec. 2, p. 22.
- People, December 14, 1992, pp. 17-19, December 12, 1994.
— Carol Brennan
