actor; singer; movie director; choreographer; screenwriter
Personal Information
Born Tisha Campbell on October 13, 1968, in Oklahoma City, OK; daughter of Mona Campbell; married Duane Martin, 1996; children: Xen.
Career
Actress, 1974-; choreographer, 1990; recording artist, 1993; film director, 2001-; screenwriter, 2003-.
Life's Work
Performer Tisha Campbell-Martin has made herself known to viewers, first, with acting credits in a series of successful films and, second, through lead roles in hit television series such as FOX's Martin and ABC's My Wife and Kids. More specifically, Campbell-Martin has appeared in films made by black filmmakers and marketed to largely black audiences. Consequently, the actress has been an important player in the fields of black film and television, in which the entertainment industry started investing during the last 20 years. Campbell-Martin's success is, therefore, an analog and a tribute to the growing market-strength of African-American audiences.
Although she was actually born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on October 13, 1968, Campbell-Martin identified herself as a native of Newark, New Jersey, since the family moved to Newark before she turned three. She began singing as soon as she was capable of doing so and even entered her first talent contest at the age of six--although some reporters have pushed the event back three years, making the aspiring performer only three. She won the contest and took home first prize--a Ford Grenada, for which she had little use. After that auspicious beginning, young Campbell-Martin pursued more work in show business, making use of her proximity to New York City. "My parents never forced me to go on auditions--I begged them to take me," she told Brenda Herrmann of the Chicago Tribune in March of 1993. She continued singing and, at seven, began acting professionally as well.
Overcame Shyness Through Performing
As the years went by, she accumulated more and more bit parts on Broadway's "kiddie circuit," appeared in The Magnificent Major in 1977, and procured television roles on after-school specials. Surprisingly, Campbell-Martin has described herself as a shy child and interpreted her drive to perform as a way of forcing herself out of that shyness. "When I first entered the industry, I was so shy," she told Allison Samuels of Upscale. "I didn't begin taking the industry seriously until I was about 15 years old. Up until then it was just something fun to do." During those teen years, she also won a place in the Arts High School in Newark, of which she told Robin Rauzi from the Los Angeles Times that "It's not like Fame at all." Campbell-Martin's first real break didn't come until 1986, when she was offered a small part in the film production of Little Shop of Horrors, based on the hit Broadway play.
Little Shop's release in 1987 coincided with a more central role in a short-lived television series called Rags to Riches. Campbell-Martin was chosen to be one among five "orphan girls" around whom the show revolved; the five stars had initially competed with approximately 1,800 other aspiring performers in auditions that took place in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The show not only made use of Campbell-Martin's acting abilities, but also included musical numbers that allowed the young performer to display her dancing and singing talents. A Variety reviewer noted Campbell-Martin as one of "the most prominent" among the quintet of teenage girls. Although the show received a fair amount of positive media, it didn't catch on with viewers and it wasn't Campbell-Martin's key to show business fame.
While Rags to Riches was still in production, Campbell-Martin also assumed a lead role in black filmmaker Spike Lee's School Daze, after Vanessa Williams, a former Miss America, decided she wasn't comfortable with the part. In a story that dealt with the sensitive topic of class and color politics on a black college campus, Campbell-Martin played the "leader" of a light-skinned sorority house--the "wannabees," or "want-to-be-whites." Consequently, her character would be a focal point for potential audience anger.
"Being in School Daze was an experience like no other," Campbell-Martin told Upscale. "I was really young, and the leading female character was a lot to handle--not to mention what the film was about. This put even more strain on me because it was such a controversial subject." Black audiences generally struggled with their reactions to the film's painful topic. What the film tackled, according to Essence's Bonnie Allen, was "ultimately ... a conflict among Black Americans resulting from our steadfast refusal to confront our color consciousness and caste systems."
Won First Lead TV Role
Although the debate that School Daze generated tended to steal attention away from the work of the performers, the role was nonetheless a turning point in Campbell-Martin's career. She was approached more and more often to lend her presence to projects made by black artists for black audiences. The first of these was a pilot for a new television series called Heart and Soul. Aired in the summer of 1988, Campbell-Martin had a leading role on the show. Greeted unfavorably by critics, the series never took off. Many reviewers did, however, note Campbell-Martin's talent. Variety's reviewer, writing in 1988, commented on her "refreshingly firm-but-sweet approach"; meanwhile, the writer for People credited Campbell-Martin with bringing "some calm humanity to this circus."
The real pay-off from School Daze came in a range of notable roles in a string of high-profile films. A leading role in House Party and House Party II introduced Campbell-Martin to the Hudlin brothers, two rising young producers whom a Newsweek reviewer predicted would "follow Spike Lee's success and reap big bucks from a wide multiracial audience." The same reviewer pegged Campbell-Martin as one of the "dynamite dancers" in the film. She interspersed this work with parts in superstar comic Eddie Murphy's Another 48 Hours, released in 1990, and Boomerang, released in 1992.
"Doing Boomerang was definitely a high point in my career," Campbell-Martin told Upscale. "At first I wasn't even going to audition for the role because it was such a small part, and I felt I'd been typecast as too much of a nice girl in my other films to get it anyway. Then I told myself to stop tripping--work is work, and I am glad I did it. People are always saying I was their favorite character even though I was only in three scenes of the film."
She had her first memorable introduction to television audiences in 1991, with a guest role on A Different World, NBC's long-running spin-off from The Cosby Show. Her part here also appealed to Campbell-Martin's desire to do work with a social conscience, since the episode addressed the need to educate young people about the danger of AIDS. The pilot for Moe's World, in which Campbell-Martin played a pregnant teenager, also addressed difficult social issues, but--as with Campbell-Martin's previous television experiences--never got off the ground. Campbell-Martin mourned it's ill fortune, since, as she explained to Upscale, it "was probably one of the best pieces of work I've done. It was such a positive piece about black life, but it was never given a chance because of politics. When you're a black actress, you take those things to heart because parts like that don't come everyday."
Breakthrough Role on Martin
Her television breakthrough came, instead, in the form of an offer from one of her former co-stars from House Party and Boomerang, Martin Lawrence. Having settled a contract with Fox Television for a comedy series, Lawrence needed an actress to play the part of the protagonist's girlfriend, Gena--a role that Deborah Gregory described in Essence as "in-your-face." "The first time we worked together in House Party, " Campbell-Martin told Upscale, "it worked well, so I knew this project would probably work because the chemistry was already there."
Campbell-Martin went on to express her excitement about Gena: "She's this upscale black woman, who has faults, but she's very strong and supportive of her man. The thing I love the most about her though, is that she's not a 25-year-old without a past--she's done her share of things and often spends the night with her boyfriend. I think that's more realistically in touch with today's young women. I think Gena will be seen as one of the best black female characters to come out in a while." Eventually, Martin "became an unequivocal smash," in Gregory's words.
As soon as Campbell-Martin had established herself in American living rooms via Martin, she decided to find a venue for her other talents as well. A contract with Capitol Records in 1992, led to a 1993 debut album, Tisha. Janine McAdams, writing for Billboard, noted that the "lead-off single has been shouldering its way into the top half of the Hot R&B Singles chart." Campbell-Martin was personally proud that the album included the first song she had ever written, "Why Won't You Love Me," on which she collaborated with her mother, Mona Campbell. Furthermore, as Campbell-Martin told Billboard, she made a point of being involved in every part of the production, "especially video. I go through director's reels and I'm real clear about my visual image."
Jean Viggins, a vice president at Capitol, expressed appreciation for the performer's expansive skills when he told McAdams that "Tisha is probably the best-equipped artist across the board as far as stage presence, interviews, stage ability. I never had an opportunity to work with an artist that is so broad-based." Although the album didn't shake up the music world, several critics had praise for it. "Unable to blast away with the sheer vocal power of some of her contemporaries," Mitchell May wrote in the Chicago Tribune, "Tisha Campbell relies instead on a wonderful knack for phrasing that allows her to caress the notes of each ballad and give character to songs."
Left Martin After Conflict With Lawrence
Things seemed to be going perfectly for Campbell-Martin in the mid-1990s. She starred on one of the most popular shows on FOX, her singing career, while not blockbuster, was progressing slowly, and in January of 1996, she married Duane Martin, her boyfriend of six years, and star of the television series Out All Night and the film Above the Rim. But as Martin moved into its fifth season in 1997, tension began to build between Campbell-Martin and co-star Lawrence. According to Campbell-Martin in a lawsuit later filed against Lawrence and HBO, Lawrence was mentally unstable and had begun to sexually harass her, both in private and in public. Campbell-Martin went as far as to ask the writers to not write any scenes where her character and Lawrence's character were physical in any way or appeared in any bedroom type setting. By November of 1996 the situation became too much for Campbell-Martin and she left the show, supposedly for good.
The HBO company which produced Martin knew that the show, which had only taped the first half of the fifth season, needed Campbell-Martin to proceed with the storyline that had been created for the characters by the writers, and they filed a temporary restraining order against Campbell-Martin in an attempt to force her back to the set to continue filming. However, U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins denied this restraining order in December of 1996. A month later, in January of 1997, Campbell-Martin fired back by suing both Lawrence and HBO for damages resulting from sexual harassment and battery. In her testimony Campbell-Martin claimed, according to Jet magazine, that Lawrence's inappropriate behavior began in the show's second season in 1993 where Lawrence would "fly into uncontrollable fits of rage for no apparent rational reason." By the third season Lawrence, "humiliated and abused Campbell in front of the entire cast and crew on so many occasions that it reached the point where she needed to be hospitalized due to the stress he caused her." Finally, by the fourth season, the harassment became physical. According to Jet "Lawrence again tried to force his tongue into Campbell's mouth, simulated intercourse and forcibly touched her body, all against her will."
By March of 1997 the lawsuit was settled out of court and while the settlement was never disclosed by either HBO, FOX, or Campbell-Martin, Campbell-Martin did return to the Martin set to film the last three episodes of the fifth season with the strict understanding that she would not appear in any scenes with Lawrence. After the end of the fifth season, Campbell-Martin again quit the show, this time for good, and shortly after the show was dropped by FOX.
After leaving Martin, Campell-Martin appeared in the comedy film Sprung where she played a lawyer looking for love. She also appeared in the television movie The Sweetest Gift in 1998 as a country woman looking for companionship. While critics lauded both roles, neither movie gained any amount of success. Campell-Martin decided to return to her roots of dance and singing and performed in a few off-Broadway plays during 1999 and 2000 and many critics suspected that she had lost her love of television and film and would not soon return to either medium.
Returned to Television With "Kids"
Then, in 2001, Campbell-Martin tried out for Damon Wayans's new comedy on ABC called My Wife and Kids, a family show that dealt with real life issues and good moral parenting values, at the request of her husband Duane. She told Essence, "Duane convinced me to go back. He missed that part of me." Many people assumed that the show would be like many other network offerings around that time, heavy on the racial issues that concern an African-American family and light on the day to day problems that effect all families. But as Campell-Martin told Essence, the series is about "a family dealing with real issues." She went on to talk about how other shows such as The Hughleys, which many critics were quick to compare to My Wife and Kids, was "a fish-out-of-water kind of thing. The only similarity is that we're Black and have kids."
The critics soon came around to Campbell-Martin's point of view. My Wife and Kids became a hit for ABC on Wednesday nights and became a staple comedy for the network to build around. In 2001 it was averaging a weekly audience of 12 million viewers. But the show was not the only success that Campbell-Martin was enjoying. In August of 2001 Martin-Campbell gave birth to the couple's first child, Xen Martin. This does not mean, however, that Campell-Martin has slowed down. A few months after the birth of Xen, she was back at work on My Wife and Kids, was wrapping up shooting on a movie called The Last Place on Earth, and was also directing her first movie Get Up Stand Up Comedy. She was scheduled to appear on the upcoming third season of My Wife and Kids, and has also taken up screen writing with her first movie, The Seat Filler scheduled to appear in theaters in 2004.
Works
Selected works
AlbumsFilms- The Magnificent Major, 1977.
- Little Shop of Horrors, 1986.
- School Daze, 1988.
- House Party, 1990.
- Another 48 Hrs., 1990.
- House Party 2, 1991.
- Boomerang, 1992.
- House Party 3, 1994.
- Sprung, 1997.
- (as director) Get Up Stand Up Comedy, 2001.
- The Last Place on Earth, 2002.
- (as screenwriter) The Seat Filler, 2004.
Television- Rags to Riches, NBC, 1987-88.
- Martin, FOX, 1992-97.
- The Sweetest Gift, Hallmark Entertainment Network, 1998.
- My Wife and Kids, ABC, 2001-.
Further Reading
Periodicals
- Billboard, January 30, 1993, p. 23.
- Chicago Tribune, February 11, 1993, section 5, p. 7; March 2, 1993, section 5, p. 5.
- Essence, February 1988, pp. 50-52, 130-32; May 1993, p. 52; March 2001, p. 10.
- Jet, February 22, 1988, pp. 28-31; April 29, 1991, p. 52; March 8, 1993, pp. 56-58; February 21, 1994, pp. 56-58; September 4, 1995, pp. 12-14; January 27, 1997, pp. 34-36; August 27, 2001, p. 33; December 17, 2001, pp. 56-60.
- Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1993, pp. F-1, F-8; January 7, 1997, p. 6.
- Newsweek, March 26, 1990, p. 55.
- People, January 12, 1987, p. 10; July 25, 1988, pp. 7-8.
- People Weekly, January 20, 1997, p. 59-60; February 23, 1998, p. 18.
- Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), May 20, 1997, p. 25.
- Teen Magazine, January 1988, p. 45.
- Upscale, December/January, 1993, pp. 76-77.
- Variety, March 25, 1987, p. 72; July 27, 1988, p. 50; May 19, 1997, p. 49; April 2, 2001, p. 27.
On-line- "Tisha Campbell," Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com (September 25, 2003).
— Ondine Le Blanc and Ralph G. Zerbonia
