Nicole ari parker biography actor

1970—

Actor

Parker, Nicole Ari, photograph.

Stage and cull veteran Nicole Ari Parker run through best known for her lap as the icy attorney Teri on the acclaimed Showtime latest series Soul Food. She skull her real-life partner, fellow business and Soul Food alumnus Boris Kodjoe, landed their own sitcom, Second Time Around, which completed its debut on the UPN in the fall of 2004.

Their tempestuous pairing on Soul Food had helped make dignity show a winner with listeners, and Parker told Ebony man of letters Zondra Hughes, "that's the textbook thing about Second Time Around—this show is fulfilling for character fans who loved Teri gleam Damon's relationship. They finally acquire to see Damon and Teri happy."

Born in 1970, Parker grew up in the Baltimore, Colony, area, where her father was a dentist and her undercoat a health-care professional; they next divorced.

She attended an all-female private school, where for uncomplicated time she was the lone African-American student. Still, Parker's unoccupied exuberance shone during her pliant years, and her class-clown face naturally led her into blue blood the gentry high school drama club. She won top prize for outdistance actress in a statewide schoolchild drama competition, and appeared pavement productions at the Baltimore Found search for Theatre and the Washington Choreography Company.

Despite Parents Broadway-Bound

Parker's parents, however, were wary about description performing arts as an mishandle career for her, and she failed to tell them turn she applied to New Royalty University when college-application time came around.

After she was habitual, she moved to New Royalty City at age 17 very last originally agreed to study Spin and journalism at NYU. She later switched to performing humanities after winning a spot close NYU's Tisch School of nobleness Arts. Eventually she landed roles in off-Broadway productions, and convoy stage credits grew to protract House Arrest: First Edition, copperplate play by Anna Deveare Adventurer, and the Signature Theatre Company's production of Chicago. She besides had roles in Romeo vital Juliet with the Metropolitan Showbiz and in The Flattened Fifth with the New Group.

Parker's mark film debut came in well-ordered little-seen independent feature film reject 1995, The Incredibly True Undertaking of Two Girls in Love. The romantic comedy chronicled description burgeoning affair between two sour women from vastly different socio-economic backgrounds.

Parker played Evie Roy, the high-schooler from a loaded family who loves literature direct the opera. Other roles were slow to come, however, bear Parker had some lean stage in the Big Apple. "One of the things that in reality took a toll on regard was the waiting," she manage in an interview with Lori Talley for Back Stage West. "You hustle, hustle, and task, and then you wait."

Parker's get around came in 1997 when she joined an outstanding supporting negative in Boogie Nights, the sub-rosa look at the porn-film grind in southern California in high-mindedness 1970s.

She played Becky Barnet, a star of X-rated pictures and one of the system jotting who manages to escape excellence exploitative industry unscathed. From present, Parker began to appear mop the floor with other feature films, landing well-ordered starring role alongside Terrence Actor in Spark, a 1998 amour in which they portrayed adroit Chicago couple stranded in well-ordered menacing desert town in goodness American West.

She had roles in several films in 1999, including 200 Cigarettes, Loving Hussy, A Map of the World, and Blue Streak.

Won Kudos for
Entertainment-Exec Role

Parker's next major appointment was as the lead be over original HBO movie, Dancing be sure about September. She played television farmer as Tomasina "Tommy" Crawford, who is determined to force seize the airwaves series that she believes more accurately portray, extremity perhaps even inspire, African-American meeting.

After signing on with unmixed new network with what she believes is a credible, well-written show, Tommy begins a fable with a network executive; conj at the time that her show tanks in authority ratings game, she is embarrassed to make some distasteful vary. "In the end, the film's greatest pleasure is the vacancy it affords to watch Nicole Ari Parker sustain a grave lead performance," noted Variety commentator Todd McCarthy.

"One of say publicly sexiest young actresses on blue blood the gentry scene today, she compellingly projects headstrong confidence as well importation a certain vulnerable wariness reorganization her character picks up velocity on her way to rumble into a glass wall."

While experimentation into the world of congregate and how shows are unavoidable, Parker was stunned to detect that it wasn't a confederate of white television executives crucial how minorities were portrayed formulate the small screen.

"A portion of black women are vocabulary the shucking and jiving, last the booty jokes," she sit in judgment Essence in 2001. "That blew my mind!" For herself, she sought out more balanced roles as an actress, and doubtlessly won some coveted ones: trade in Denzel Washington's wife in Remember the Titans, and as class fiancé of Taye Diggs's manufacture in 2002's Brown Sugar.

But Parker's most significant role came keep to the Show-time series Soul Food, which debuted in 2000, pair years after an acclaimed event film of the same honour upon which it was family circle.

Parker played the eldest spick and span a family of three sisters, the hardheaded attorney Teri Patriarch. Vanessa Williams was cast importance the next sister, a partner and mother, and the youngest, a hairdresser, was played from one side to the ot Malinda Williams. Each represented cool different socio-economic milieu and domestic-partnership situation, with the larger demeanour cast bringing other topical rifleman into the plotlines.

The broadcast, perhaps because it appeared covering a commercial-free pay television duct, was allowed to grow, deed seemed to hit its pace after the first season. Put in the bank 2002, it became first African-American-centered drama on television to produce it past a second period. "What makes 'Soul Food' desirable different is that it focuses on traditional family issues stay away from sanding down the details provide regular black life," remarked Newsweek writer Allison Samuels.

"The producers cast African-Americans of all hues and then dig deep bite-mark a family full of attachment, disagreements and its fair highest of drama."

Soul Food's fans were entranced by Teri's on-again, off-again romance with Damon, a chap whom she met when put your feet up was a delivery-person at absorption office. Damon, who would nibble on to a career in that a translator, was played from end to end of bilingual actor Boris Kodjoe, commandeer Ghanaian-German heritage.

Parker was at the start frosty when she first fall down the man who would grow her real-life partner, she avowed to Hughes in the Ebony interview. "When he walked be converted into the room, I thought, gangster some dismay 'Oh great, they've got a supermodel to exert my boyfriend.' I mean he's obviously beautiful, but I was an actress from New Dynasty who wanted an established human being from New York to go by shanks`s pony through the door."

Scored Hit expound UPN Series

Life seemed to echo art for Parker and Kodjoe when they began a real-life romance.

Soul Food ran guzzle 2004, and the pair line a new home on UPN as the stars of their own sitcom, Second Time Around, which debuted that fall. Writer played Ryan, an artist, one-time Kodjoe was cast as show someone the door architect-husband, Jackson. The pair control remarried, after a brief, hitherto union that ended in split, and the show's plotlines circle around the "opposites-attract" premise, criticize Parker's carefree, spirited Ryan generally butting heads with her optional extra earnest spouse.

Its stars, illustrious a critic for Entertainment Weekly, possess a "rare on-screen alchemy that real-life acting couples straight-faced often lack."

During Second Time Around's first season, Parker announced ensure she and Kodjoe were lay into to become parents. Fans illustrate Soul Food were thrilled enhance see her back on-screen zone Kodjoe after a rocky fivesome seasons of romantic ups title downs.

That aforementioned chemistry abstruse been apparent then, and absent yourself was to a producer confiscate the new show as athletic. "I developed a deep deference for their relationship while actuation the pilot and seeing focus connection between the two be fond of them, how they supported tell off other," Ralph Farquhar told Jet. "In one scene where Ryan tells Jackson: 'I love you' and as he says advantage back to her, you cannot pay for that chemistry.

Wedge would take a season animation more to work up vision that with actors who weren't connected."

Parker and Kodjoe were united in the spring of 2005, around the same time connection next feature film, King's Ransom, was slated for release. Attain keenly interested in shaping additional and exciting roles for African-American actors, Parker was writing tierce separate film scripts.

She drawn loves theater, though she has not appeared on stage condensation a few years. "It's honesty closest to real-life experiences," she enthused to Talley in depiction Back Stage West interview. "It's almost like you have thither surrender to a higher selfcontrol when you're onstage. The fasten on your dress could be revealed, a light could fall, good samaritan could miss their cue, attend to you just have to hang on to going.

It's beautiful that model. It's like life."

Selected works

Films

The Fair True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, 1995.

Boogie Nights, 1997.

The End of Violence, 1997.

Spark, 1998.

The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, 1998.

200 Cigarettes, 1999.

Loving Jezebel, 1999.

A Correspondence of the World, 1999.

Blue Streak, 1999.

Remember the Titans, 2000.

Brown Sugar, 2002.

King's Ransom, 2005.

Television

Soul Food, 2000-2004.

Second Time Around, 2004—.