Anna Deavere Smith

Anna Deavere Smith, 2009

Anna Deavere Smith (born September 18, 1950 in Baltimore (Maryland) ) is an American actress , playwright and university professor . She has been the recipient of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize since 2012, has been a MacArthur Fellow since 1996 , and Barack Obama awarded her the National Humanities Medal in 2012 . She is best known for her role as National Security Advisor Nancy McNally in The West Wing and Gloria Akalitus in Nurse Jackie .

Life

Anna Deavere Smith is the daughter of a basic school headmistress and a coffee trader , it has four younger siblings. She graduated from Western High School in Baltimore and then studied at Arcadia University until 1971 . She received her Master of Fine Arts from the American Conservatory Theater .

Smith takes part in a wide range of plays , at the beginning of her activity she was seen for example for the New York Shakespeare Festival in the play The Merry Wives of Windsor . Her documentary theater is constantly known , mainly her piece Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 , in which the Crown Heights riots of 1991 and the 1992 riots in Los Angeles are edited by her. In addition to her stage appearances, Smith has also been seen as a television and film actress since 1970, she was Hazel the Shampoo Girl in All My Children for many years . Prior to The West Wing (2000-06), she entered the White House in Dave (1993) and Hello, Mr. President (1995) . In Nurse Jackie she is as an administrator of a hospital to see since 2009, in 2014 she was a mentor in an episode of the documentary series Master Class .

In 2017 she was accepted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), which awards the Oscars every year.

At Tisch School of the Arts , she teaches in the Performance Studies department at New York University . Between 1999 and 2000 she also taught at Stanford University , prior to that at Carnegie Mellon University . She also works at the New York University School of Law and has been a visiting professor at the School of Medicine at Yale University . She is the founder of the original only for three years, 1997 to 2000 foreseen but now resistant to existing Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue (German: Institute for dialogue between art and citizens ).

Smith was artist in residence at various institutions :

Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 , Anchor 1994. ( English ) ISBN 978-0385473767
Talk to Me: Travels in Media and Politics , Anchor 2001. ( English ) ISBN 978-0385721745
Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts-For Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind , Anchor 2006. ( English ) ISBN 978-1400032389

For her play Fires in the Mirror , Smith was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1993, but only won the Drama Desk Award , and the following year she received two nominations for her work Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 , for which she was also awarded a Drama Desk Award. and also honored with a Theater World Award . Smith became a MacArthur Fellow in 1996 , the Fletcher Foundation Fellowship in 2006, and the Matrix Award from the Association of Women in Communication in 2008 . the United Solo Theater Festival honored her in 2010 as an exceptional solo artist . In 2012, Barack Obama awarded her the National Humanities Medal . In 2019, Smith was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Commons : Anna Deavere Smith - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

^ Anna Deavere Smith. In: National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved on August 14, 2020 .
↑ "Class of 2017". Accessed June 30, 2017. http://www.app.oscars.org/class2017/ .
^ ^A ^b Anna Deavere Smith University Professor , law.nyu.edu. Retrieved July 12, 2014.