Yvette Freeman

Yvette Freeman is an American actress, singer, and director born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware. After relocating to New York City to pursue a career in graphic design, she shifted her focus to stage performance, appearing in productions including The Wiz and Ain't Misbehavin'. She also worked as a nightclub singer and performed in cabaret during this period.

Freeman's Broadway career spans 1978 to 1979, with her credited appearance in the original production of Ain't Misbehavin'. In 1990, she moved to Los Angeles and began building a television career, with early appearances on Tales from the Crypt, Knots Landing, and L.A. Law.

Her most prominent television role came in 1994, when she was cast as Haleh Adams, a registered nurse, on the NBC medical drama ER. Freeman appeared in 184 episodes across every season of the series, from the two-hour pilot through the 2009 finale, making her one of the longest-serving recurring cast members in the show's history. Concurrently, from 1997 to 1999, she held a regular role as Evelyn Smalley on the NBC sitcom Working. During the 2000s, she had recurring roles on the daytime soap operas Days of Our Lives and The Bold and the Beautiful, and guest-starred on Judging Amy, Boston Public, and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. In 2014, she joined the cast of the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black as Irma Lerman, one of a group of characters referred to as the Golden Girls. She shared a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series with the cast of that series.

Off-Broadway, Freeman earned the 1998 Obie Award for Distinguished Performance by an Actress for her portrayal of Dinah Washington in the play Dinah Was. The following year, she released her debut album, A Tribute to Dinah Washington. In 2012, she played Ma Rainey in the Huntington Theatre Company's production of August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.