Nell Carter

At 54 years old, Nell Carter physical status not available right now. We will update Nell Carter's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

At age 19, Hardy changed her surname to Carter and left Birmingham, Alabama, moving to New York City with the Renaissance Ensemble. In New York City, Carter sang in coffee shops, then landed her first role on Broadway in 1971.

Carter made her Broadway debut in the 1971 rock opera Soon, which closed after three performances. She was the music director for the 1974 Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective's production of "What Time of Night It Is". Carter appeared with Bette Davis in the 1974 stage musical Miss Moffat, based on Davis' earlier film The Corn Is Green. The show closed before making it to Broadway. She broke into stardom in the musical Ain't Misbehavin, for which she won a Tony Award in 1978. She later won an Emmy for the same role in a televised performance in 1982.

In 1978, Carter was cast as Effie White in the Broadway musical Dreamgirls, but departed the production during development to take a television role on Ryan's Hope. (When Dreamgirls premiered in late 1981, Jennifer Holliday had taken over the lead.)

Additional Broadway credits included Dude and Annie.

In 1979, she had a part in the Miloš Forman-directed musical daptation of Hair. Her vocal talents are showcased throughout the soundtrack.

In 1981, Carter took a role on television's The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, then landed the lead role of Nell Harper on the sitcom Gimme a Break!.

Nell Carter would become perhaps best known to audiences for her lead role in the NBC television series Gimme a Break!, in which she played the role of a housekeeper for a widowed police chief (Dolph Sweet) and his three daughters. The show was a ratings hit for NBC and earned Carter nominations for a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award. 137 episodes of Gimme a Break! were produced over a run of six seasons, airing from 1981 to 1987.

In August 1987, after the cancellation of Gimme a Break!, Carter returned to the nightclub circuit with a five-month national tour with comedian Joan Rivers.

In 1989, she shot a pilot for NBC titled Morton's by the Bay, which aired as a one-time special that May; Carter played the assistant to a banquet-hall owner, and the focus was on her and her madcap staff. NBC passed on the series development. That October she performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" before Game 4 of the 1989 World Series in San Francisco.

In 1990, Carter starred in the CBS comedy You Take the Kids. The series, which was perceived as being the black answer to Roseanne due to its portrayal of a working-class African-American family, featured Carter as a crass, no-nonsense mother and wife.You Take the Kids faced poor ratings and reviews, and had a month's run from December 1990 to January 1991. During the early 1990s, Carter appeared in low-budget movies, TV specials, and game shows such as Match Game '90 and To Tell the Truth. She co-starred in Hangin' with Mr. Cooper from 1993 to 1995.

In the mid-1990s, Carter appeared on Broadway in a revival of Annie as Miss Hannigan. She was upset when commercials promoting the show used a different actress, white actress Marcia Lewis, as Miss Hannigan. The producers stated that the commercials, which were made during an earlier production, were too costly to reshoot. Carter said racism played a part in the decision. "Maybe they don't want audiences to know Nell Carter is black", she told the New York Post. "It hurts a lot", Carter told the Post, "I've asked them nicely to stop it—it's insulting to me as a black woman." Carter later was replaced by Sally Struthers.

In 2001, she appeared as a special guest-star on the pilot episode of Reba and continued with the show, making three appearances in season one. The following year, Carter made two appearances on Ally McBeal.

The next year had her rehearsing for a production of Raisin, a stage musical of A Raisin in the Sun in Long Beach, California, and filming Swing. Carter's final onscreen appearance was in the comedy film Back by Midnight. It was released in 2005, two years after her death.

Source