Phylicia Rashad

Robert Presutti for The New York Times

Updated: June 26, 2009
By Felicia R. Lee
Phylicia Rashad, a soft-spoken, slyly humorous actress, has fashioned a celebrated career out of playing mothers. She killed her own children in a jealous rage as Medea. She bought a house in a hostile white neighborhood then persuaded her offspring to live there as Lena Younger in "A Raisin in the Sun." And she juggled a law practice, five children and a mischievous husband without breaking a sweat as Clair Huxtable on the NBC sitcom "The Cosby Show."
In a monthlong run beginning in late May 2009, she has starred in the role of Violet Weston, the brittle, uncensored drug-abusing matriarch of an Oklahoma family in the drama "August: Osage County." In a notable flourish of so-called nontraditional casting, Ms. Rashad inherited a white stage family of three daughters, a husband, a sister and other relatives.
Ms. Rashad, whose performance in "A Raisin in the Sun" in 2004 won her a Tony Award for best actress -- a first for a black actress -- was the third person to play Violet on Broadway: Deanna Dunagan was the original Violet in a performance that won her a Tony in 2008, followed by Estelle Parsons, who will go on a national tour of the play. "August" won both the Pulitzer Prize and a Tony in 2008.
Ms. Rashad's most recent Broadway performance was the role of Big Mama in Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" in 2008. It was one of three well-known 1950s dramas -- along with William Inge's "Come Back, Little Sheba" and Clifford Odets's "Country Girl" -- that arrived on Broadway in 2008 with black or racially polyglot casts. "August," however, is a contemporary drama.
The lust for acting seized Ms. Rashad as an 11-year-old in Houston, when she was a mistress of ceremonies for a music festival. It made her feel beautiful, she said. "The beauty was something that would take me time to articulate, but beauty was communication from the heart," she said.
She studied theater at Howard University and began her career as a stage actress in New York, making her Broadway debut in the 1975 musical "The Wiz."
In 1982, she played a lawyer in the ABC soap opera "One Life to Live" before landing her most famous TV role as Bill Cosby's wife on "The Cosby Show," which was broadcast from 1984 to 1992 and broke ground for its portrayal of an upper-middle-class black family.
Besides her recent turns on Broadway as Aunt Ester in August Wilson's "Gem of the Ocean" in 2005 and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," she has worked steadily in regional and Off Broadway theater. Her reprisal of the Lena Younger role in the 2008 ABC film version of "A Raisin in the Sun" won her an Emmy nomination.
"I love theater," said Ms. Rashad, a self-described "born-again bachelorette" who lives in the New York area. "To have the people onstage right there, to be working in concert with other artists," she said, her soft voice rising, "this is a like a school of fish moving together."
Ms. Rashad comes from a family of educators and artists. Her mother, Vivian Ayers Allen, is a poet and playwright. Her sister, Debbie Allen, is a director and actress with whom she often works. Her daughter, Condola Rashad (from her third marriage, to Ahmad Rashad), decided on acting at the age of 4, Ms. Rashad said, her face lighting up with pride. Condola is currently Off Broadway in "Ruined," the Lynn Nottage play that won a Pulitzer in 2009. Ms. Rashad's older child, William, works in computer graphics.