Amelia Marshall

Amelia Marshall is an American actress born on April 2, 1958, in Albany, Georgia. Her family lived in Atlanta, Georgia, and Amityville, New York before settling in Houston, Texas. Her mother worked as a math teacher and her father was an executive at a large insurance company. Marshall has an older sister and a younger brother, and she was named after her great-aunt.

At age thirteen, a friend encouraged Marshall to audition for the vocal department at the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston. Despite limited prior training, she auditioned by singing "Ave Maria" and was accepted. She chose Survey of Dance as an elective and went on to study with the Houston Ballet, also becoming a member of the Houston Jazz Ballet Company. She later enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and was a cheerleader. Following graduation, she spent two years as a telephone repair supervisor for Southwestern Bell, during which time she learned telephone repair and pole climbing.

While still employed at Southwestern Bell, Marshall danced with a regional company in the evenings. She auditioned for a professional theater company in Fort Worth, won a role, and spent the next seven years working in theater. Her Broadway career spanned from 1983 to 1987 and included roles in Porgy and Bess (1983), Harrigan 'n Hart (1985), and Big Deal (1986). She also appeared in national tours of Cats and West Side Story. Beyond Broadway, Marshall performed at the Kennedy Center in Duke Ellington's Queenie Pie and at the Houston Grand Opera in Scott Joplin's Treemonisha. In 1986, she appeared as a dancer in the television special Robert Klein on Broadway.

In 1984, Marshall played the role of Miranda on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live. The part had been intended as a long-term role, but following backstage changes when Paul Rauch was hired as executive producer, she was written out after two weeks. She was cast as Gillian "Gilly" Grant Speakes on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light in 1989, initially working as a day player for more than a year before being placed on contract. She was the second African American actor to receive a contract role on Guiding Light, after her co-star Vince Williams. Marshall last aired on the series in July 1996, attributing her dismissal to changes in the writing staff and diminished interest in writing for her character.

In September 1996, Marshall joined the cast of the ABC soap opera All My Children as Belinda Keefer, replacing Kim Hawthorne in the role. She was released from that show in July 1999. In 1997, she starred Off-Broadway in Minor Demons at the Century Center for the Performing Arts, playing the role of Diane Gardner. On September 27, 2001, she made her first appearance on the NBC soap opera Passions as Liz Sanbourne, a villainess and sister to the character Dr. Eve Russell. Marshall remained on contract for four and a half years before being dismissed in July 2007 due to budget cuts. Also in 2001 and 2002, she appeared in the films Stuart Little 2 and According to Spencer, and guest-starred on the television series Lizzie McGuire and The District.

Marshall married Daryl Waters on November 28, 1992, at St. Paul's Chapel on the campus of Columbia University, following five years of dating. They divorced in 1995. She married Kent Schaffer in 1997, and they have a son born in January 1998. That marriage ended in divorce in 2001.