Yvette Hawkins

Yvette Hawkins (September 28, 1940 – April 10, 1995) was an American actress whose work spanned Broadway, television, and film across three decades. Born in New York City, she built her career across multiple theatrical contexts before establishing a sustained presence on Broadway between 1965 and 1994.

Early in her career, Hawkins was a member of the New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem. She also worked with the Play-House of the Ridiculous alongside John Vaccaro and Ronald Tavel. In 1977, she appeared in The Last Street Play with Morgan Freeman, and in 1978 she performed in a touring production of Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. In 1992, she played James McDaniel's mother in Cheryl L. West's Before It Hits Home.

Her Broadway career opened with James Baldwin's The Amen Corner in 1965. Subsequent Broadway credits included Lolita in 1981, Checkmates in 1988, and The Shadow Box in 1994. Her work in regional theatre and off-Broadway productions complemented this Broadway record throughout her career.

Hawkins accumulated a substantial body of film work, appearing in Nighthawks (1981), Lean on Me (1989), Mississippi Masala (1991), Zebrahead (1992), and Mighty Aphrodite (1995). Her television credits included the soap operas As the World Turns and Guiding Light, the dramas Cagney & Lacey and Law & Order, and the children's mystery series Ghostwriter. In the mid-1970s, she was credited as a writer on the Children's Television Workshop health program Feelin' Good.

In 1978, Hawkins was briefly married to writer Sam Greenlee. She died of lung cancer in New York City on April 10, 1995, at the age of 54.