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Cicely Tyson
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Cicely Tyson is a multiple Emmy Award winner and an Academy Award nominee. She ... has been honored for her humanitarian work. Her performance in Sounder brought her nominations for the Academy Award and Britain's coveted BAFTA Award. She was also named Best Actress by the Atlanta Film Festival, the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics. In addition to Sounder she starred in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, A Man Called Adam, The River Niger, Hoodlum and Fried Green Tomatoes. Ms. Tyson is perhaps best known for her performance in the title role of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, in which she played a slave woman ranging in age from 19 to 110.
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Cicely Tyson [I]s on a DVD binge. Because of Winn-Dixie, the warm-hearted family film in which she plays a peanut-butter-loving eccentric, is just out, on the heels of Diary of a Mad Black Woman and the classic Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, about a woman born into slavery. Tyson, a onetime model who turned to acting in the 1950s, is currently filming a sequel to Mad Black Woman .
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One of America's most respected dramatic actresses, Cicely Tyson has worked steadily as a television, film, and stage actress since making her stage debut in a Harlem YMCA production of Dark of the Moon in the 1950s. The daughter of Caribbean immigrants, Tyson was raised in Harlem. After working as a secretary and a successful model, she became an actress, landed her first jobs in off-Broadway productions, and eventually made it to the Great White Way in the late '50s. Tyson got her first real break in 1963, playing a secretary to George C. Scott on the TV series East Side/West Side, and in 1966 signed on with the daytime soap The Guiding Light. That same year, she made her credited screen debut starring opposite Sammy Davis Jr. in the drama A Man Called Adam (her first uncredited film role was in 1959's Odds Against Tomorrow). More film, television, and stage work followed, but Tyson did not truly become a star until her Oscar-nominated performance in the Depression drama Sounder (1972).
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A trailblazing actress and humanitarian, Cicely Tyson has a film and TV career spanning more than five decades. She won an Oscar nod for her role in Sounder and was the first African American to win a TV movie lead actress Emmy for her riveting performance in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. A National African-American Museum of History and Culture Commissioner, Tyson is resolute in taking roles that make positive contributions to her heritage. She can be seen in two new films, Because of Winn-Dixie and Diary of a Mad Black Woman.
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Cicely Tyson gained widespread attention for her role as a secretary on the hard-hitting TV series, "East Side/West Side" (CBS, 1963-64), opposite George C. Scott. Like many gifted black performers, Tyson established herself in the theater and found occasional film roles in the 1960s (like her turn as a domestic in "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" 1968). She finally began landing worthy film roles in the 70s, most notably in "Sounder" (1972). As the Depression-era wife and mother struggling to hold her family together while he husband serves jail time, Tyson anchored the film and her luminous, heart-breaking performance earned her critics prizes and a justly deserved Oscar nomination as Best Actress. have proven rare; partly because of the dearth of good roles for women, but more so the lack of good roles for women of color. She attempted to breath life into her role as a woman suffering with cancer in the little-seen "The River Niger" (1975) and play the cat in George Cukor's overblown version of "The Blue Bird" (1976).
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Cicely Tyson owes her career to a good haircut. In a beauty salon, her hairdresser asked Tyson to model at a hairstyle show. At the hair show, she was spotted by a photographer from Ebony magazine, and began her successful career as a model. Within a few years, she was among the most successful black models in America.
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Cicely Tyson