Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee origin. Ruby Ann Wallace ( born October 27, 1924 in Cleveland, Ohio ) is an American actress.
Life
As Ruby Dee was one year old, her family moved from Ohio to Harlem. Your birth mother had already left because the family. Ruby was raised by her step- mother who made sure that she took piano lessons. The family rented rooms to African- American travelers, who were forbidden in New York to live in " white hotels ."
First acting experience gained Ruby Dee during high school in school plays. During her college years she played at the American Negro Theatre in Harlem. There she played along with Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. After several off-Broadway productions, she made her Broadway debut in 1943 had. In 1946 she learned during a joint Broadway production Ossie Davis, whom she married in 1948. They had three children and were married to Ossie Davis ' death in 2005. Her acting training, she intensified the newly founded Actors Studio by Lee Strasberg, where Marlon Brando received his education. In the early 1950s Ruby Dee began to get involved with her husband for the black civil rights movement. After the first rolling in Afro- American movies, they also received Hollywood roles. Mostly, however, they only played housemaid. She played a bigger role in 1958 in the musical film St. Louis Blues at the side of Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald and Mahalia Jackson. The film tells the life story of composer WC Handy, performed by Nat King Cole.
1959 Ruby Dee came back to the theater and played a starring role in the Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun. She played her role in 1961 in the film adaptation of Daniel Petrie. In the 1960s, she was the first African-American woman who took a lead role at the American Shakespeare Festival. In 1968, she co-wrote with director Jules Dassin the screenplay for the film Black Power and took over the lead female role in this film. In the early 1970s she starred in several films of the new African- American film wave. In the following years she appeared mainly in television films and continued to play theater. In the late 1980s it occupied Spike Lee together with her husband Ossie Davis in his film Do the Right Thing.
In 2001 she was awarded jointly with her husband Ossie Davis for her life's work with the Screen Actors Guild Award.
In 2005, she was staying to filming the New Zealand family comedy No. 2, when her husband Ossie Davis died of a heart attack. In 2007, she returned to the big screen, playing the mother of Denzel Washington in the movie American Gangster. The role brought her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. In 2008 she received the Spingarn Medal.