Jasmine Guy

Jasmine Chanel Guy was born on March 10, 1962, in Boston, Massachusetts, to William Vincent Guy, an African-American pastor of Atlanta's historic Friendship Baptist Church and a college instructor in philosophy and religion, and Jaye Guy, a Portuguese-American former high school teacher. Though born in Boston, Guy was raised in the Collier Heights neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, where she attended Northside Performing Arts High School. At seventeen, she relocated to New York City to study dance at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center.

Guy is an actress, singer, dancer, and director whose career has spanned stage, television, and film. Her earliest television work came in 1982, when she appeared as a dancer in seven episodes of Fame, working under choreographer Debbie Allen. She returned to work with Allen a decade later on the 1992 CBS production Stompin' at the Savoy, which also starred Vanessa Williams. Guy made her film debut in Spike Lee's 1988 musical-drama School Daze, playing Dina, a member of the Gamma Ray women's auxiliary. That same year she joined the cast of A Different World, an NBC spin-off of The Cosby Show created by Bill Cosby, in which she ultimately replaced original star Lisa Bonet. Guy portrayed Whitley Gilbert-Wayne for the duration of the series, which ran from 1987 to 1993, writing three episodes and directing one in addition to appearing in every installment. She received six consecutive NAACP Image Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for the role, winning four of them consecutively from 1990 through 1993.

In 1989, Guy appeared in Harlem Nights as Dominique La Rue, alongside Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, and Redd Foxx. Her television work in the 1990s included a 1991 episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, in which she played Kayla, one of Will Smith's girlfriends; a 1993 CBS mini-series, Queen, based on Alex Haley's companion volume to Roots, in which she played the mother of Halle Berry's character; a recurring role as the fallen angel Kathleen on Touched by an Angel from 1995 to 1997; and two episodes of Melrose Place in 1995 as Caitlin Mills. In 1996 she appeared on Living Single as a psychologist. In 1997, she provided the speaking voice of Sawyer in the Warner Bros. animated film Cats Don't Dance.

In the early 2000s, Guy appeared in the film adaptation of Anne Rice's The Feast of All Saints in 2001, lent her voice to the PBS animated series Cyberchase in 2002 as Ava, queen of the cybersite Symmetria, and in 2003 appeared in the HBO documentary Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narrative as Mary Estes Peters. From 2003 to 2004, she starred in the Showtime series Dead Like Me, created by Bryan Fuller, playing Roxy Harvey, a meter maid turned police officer and one of a core group of grim reapers. The series ran 29 episodes over two seasons alongside Ellen Muth and Mandy Patinkin, and Guy received a 2005 NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for the role. She reprised the character in the 2009 direct-to-video sequel Dead Like Me: Life After Death. From 2009 to 2017, Guy held a recurring role on The CW's The Vampire Diaries as Sheila "Grams" Bennett, the grandmother of Bonnie Bennett and a descendant of Salem Witches. She also played Gemma on Grey's Anatomy and appeared in the 2009 History Channel documentary The People Speak. In 2011 she appeared in the film October Baby, and in 2015 she appeared in Big Stone Gap alongside Ashley Judd, Patrick Wilson, Jenna Elfman, Anthony LaPaglia, Jane Krakowski, and Whoopi Goldberg. She starred in the short film My Nephew Emmett, which won the Student Academy Award and earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2018. In the early 2020s, she appeared on the Amazon Prime series Harlem.

Guy's Broadway career extended from 1984 to 2003. Her stage credits include The Wiz, in which she played Crow; Leader of the Pack, in which she played Mickey; Chicago, in which she starred as Velma Kelly; and The Violet Hour. Prior to her Broadway work, she appeared in the 1987 off-Broadway musical Beehive before traveling to France for a similar production. Her stage work has continued beyond Broadway, including productions with Atlanta's True Colors Theatre Company, where she appeared in Pearl Cleage's Blues for an Alabama Sky in 2009 and Miss Evers' Boys. In July 2010, she directed the world premiere of I Dream at the Alliance Stage of the Woodruff Arts Centre in Atlanta. That same year she joined the cast of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and Alliance Theatre Company co-production of Pearl Cleage's The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One-Hundred Years, which ran in Montgomery, Alabama, before transferring to Atlanta. In early 2011, she directed George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum for True Colors, and in June 2011 she co-starred with Kenny Leon in a production of Sam Shepard's Fool for Love at The Balzer Theater at Herren's in Atlanta. In August 2010, Guy joined True Colors Theatre Company in an off-stage capacity as Producing Director, a full-time role described as both administrative and artistic.