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50 facts about actress and singer Vanessa Williams.
1. Williams was born in 1963 in the Bronx, New York, with a birth announcement that read: "Here she is: Miss America."
2. Later in life, she participated in a DNA test that revealed her ancestry: 23% from Ghana, 17% from the British Isles (specifically English, Welsh and Irish), 15% from Cameroon, 12% Finnish, 11% Southern European, 7% from Togo, 6% from Benin, 5% from Senegal and 4% Portuguese.
3. Her maternal great-great grandfather was William A. Feilds, an African American legislator in the Tennessee House of Representatives.
4. Her mother, Helen Tinch, met her father, Milton Augustine Williams Jr., while both were music education students at Fredonia State Teachers College in the late 1950s.
5. Her parents both became elementary school music teachers after marriage, though their teaching positions were in separate districts.
6. Her father also served as the Assistant Principal of his school for an extended period of time.
7. Williams and her younger brother Chris (who would later become an actor) grew up in a predominantly white middle-class suburb of New York City.
8. Her full name is Vanessa Lynn Williams.
9. She is actress and singer.
10. She is well known for her role as Teri Joseph in the 1997 feature film Soul Food, and the television characters Wilhelmina Slater in Ugly Betty and Renee Perry in Desperate Housewives, both have which aired on ABC and Courtney Paige in The Good Wife on CBS.
11. In 1983, Williams became the first African American woman to win the title of Miss America (Miss America 1984).
12. Williams was forced to resign a few weeks prior to the end of her reign on July 22, 1984 due to a scandal surrounding the publication of unauthorized nude photographs in Penthouse magazine.
13. After her resignation as Miss America in 1984, Williams rebounded with a successful career in the entertainment industry.
14. Her work as an actor on television and in film earned her multiple Emmy nominations and a Tony Award nomination.
15. She likewise received a number of Grammy nominations for her work in the music industry, including hits such as "The Right Stuff," "Save the Best for Last," "Colors of the Wind," and "Oh How the Years Go By."
16. Williams is the recipient of 7 NAACP Image Awards and 3 Satellite Awards.
17. As the child of music teachers, Williams grew up in a musical household, studying classical and jazz dance, french horn, piano, and violin.
18. She was offered the Presidential Scholarship for Drama to attend Carnegie Mellon University during the college application period, (one of 12 students to receive it) but decided instead to attend Syracuse University on a different scholarship.
19. Thus, in 1981, Williams joined Syracuse's College of Visual and Performing Arts, Department of Drama as a musical theater major. She stayed at Syracuse through her sophomore year, until she was crowned Miss America 1984 in September 1983.
20. Twenty-five years later in May 2008, Syracuse granted Williams a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. According to Syracuse News, "Williams earned the remaining credits for her degree through industry experience and her substantial performances on stage and screen." Williams also delivered the 2008 convocation address, telling Syracuse seniors to "treasure this moment. These days are irreplaceable and are the beginning of the rest of your life."
21. A few years after resigning from the Miss America pageant, Williams debuted as a singer with the 1988 album The Right Stuff. The album contained the singles, The Right Stuff", which reached the #1 spot on Hot Dance Songs, and "Dreamin'which was #1 on R&B and No. 8 on Billboard Hot 100.
22. Her second studio album, The Comfort Zone in 1991, topped the Billboard R&B Album Chart, and contained the Billboard Hot 100 number-one hit "Save the Best for Last." In addition, in 1995 she recorded "Colors of the Wind", which won the Oscar for Best Original Song (from the Disney animated feature film Pocahontas) and reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.
23. Williams' first television appearance was on a 1984 episode of The Love Boat.
24. Made guest appearances on a number of shows, including T.J. Hooker, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Saturday Night Live, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, LateLine, MADtv, Ally McBeal and Boomtown.
25. Her appearances in television movies and miniseries include Perry Mason: The Case of the Silenced Singer and The Jacksons: An American Dream as Suzanne de Passe.
26. In 1995, Williams starred as Rose Alvarez in a television adaptation of the 1960 Broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie.
27. She played the nymph Calypso in the 1997 Hallmark Entertainment miniseries The Odyssey, starring Armand Assante.
28. She appeared as Ebony Scrooge the Ebenezer Scrooge character in an update of Charles Dickens' story A Christmas Carol called A Diva's Christmas Carol.
29. Williams broadened her ascendant music career into a theatrical role when she was cast in the Broadway production of Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1994.
30. In 2002, she featured in the Tony/Drama Desk Award winning revival production of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, for which she was nominated a Tony and Drama Desk Award for her performance as the Witch. This production included songs revised for her.
31. Williams has appeared in advertisements for RadioShack.
32. She is a spokesmodel for Proactiv Solution.
33. Was the first African-American spokesmodel for L'Oréal cosmetics in the late 1990s.
34. Her other media appearances include endorsing Crest Rejuvenating Effects Toothpaste, endorsing Disneyland and Universal Studios in a VisitCalifornia advertisement for British and Irish television in 2008, and hosting the 6th Annual 2008 TV Land Awards show.
35. She appeared on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in 2000 as a contestant, and once again on August 10, 2009, as a celebrity guest during the show's 10th anniversary prime-time special editions, winning $50,000 for her charity.
36. In 2006, Williams received considerable media attention for her comic/villainess role as former model/magazine creative director turned editor-in-chief Wilhelmina Slater in the ABC comedy series Ugly Betty. Her performance on the series resulted in a nomination for outstanding supporting actress at the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards and in 2008 and 2009, she was nominated in the outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series category for Ugly Betty.
37. In 2015, Williams joined the seventh season of The Good Wife as self-made businesswoman Courtney Paige and the love interest for Alan Cumming's character, Eli Gold. She based her interpretation of Paige on American business woman, Mellody Hobson, whom she studied through Hobson's TED talk's.
38. In a commercial that began running during Super Bowl XLVI in 2012, Williams voiced the new character Ms. Brown, a brown M&M.
39. Williams has been married three times.
40. She married her first husband, Ramon Hervey II, in 1987 just a few years after giving up her crown
41. She was the major breadwinner during the marriage which lasted for 10 years until 1997.
42. Hervey also ceased to be her manager during the marriage.
43. Hervey and Williams have three children: Melanie, Jillian Hervey, and Devin.
44. Jillian, following in her mother's footsteps, released her first single with the duo Lion Babe in 2012.
45. In 1999, Williams married NBA basketball player Rick Fox. They had a daughter in May 2000.
46. She met her third husband, Jim Skrip, ten years later. Williams married Skrip, a businessman, from Buffalo, New York, on July 4, 2015. She announced her engagement during a 2014 taping of The Queen Latifah Show.
47. Williams and her mother, Helen, co-authored a memoir entitled You Have No Idea, published in April 2012. In the book, Williams discusses her childhood, rise to fame, and personal struggles, including the fact that she was sexually molested by a woman when she was 10 years old. She also spoke candidly about having an abortion while she was in high school.
48. She is also a supporter of The San Miquel Academy of Newburgh, a school for boys at risk.
49. Has a skin-care line called "Revitalistic."
50. Sang the National Anthem at Arnold Schwarzenegger's inauguration as Governor of California.
