Leslie Uggams

Leslie Uggams

Leslie Marian Uggams is an American actress and singer. She is recognized for portraying Kizzy Reynolds in the television miniseries Roots. She had earlier been highly acclaimed for the Broadway musical Hallelujah, Baby!, winning a Theatre World Award in 1967 and the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1968.

About Leslie Uggams in brief

Summary Leslie UggamsLeslie Marian Uggams is an American actress and singer. She is recognized for portraying Kizzy Reynolds in the television miniseries Roots. She had earlier been highly acclaimed for the Broadway musical Hallelujah, Baby!, winning a Theatre World Award in 1967 and the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1968. In April 2016, she portrayed Leah Walker, the bipolar mother of Lucious Lyon in the hit Fox series Empire. She appeared as Sadie in the 2017 television film The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and in 2018, she returned as Blind Al in Deadpool 2. She was born in Harlem, the daughter of Juanita Ernestine, a Cotton Club chorus girldancer, and Harold Coyden Uggam, an elevator operator and maintenance man, who was a singer with the Hall Johnson choir.

She attended the Professional Children’s School of New York and Juilliard. She won a 1983 Daytime Emmy Award as a host of the NBC game show Fantasy. Her film career includes roles in Skyjacked, Black Girl and Poor Pretty Eddie, in which she played a popular singer who, upon being stranded in the deep South, is abused by the perverse denizens of a backwoods town.