Kasi Lemmons made her directorial debut with Eve's Bayou, followed by The Caveman's Valentine, Talk to Me, Black Nativity, Harriet, and Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody.
26 Facts About Kasi Lemmons
1.
2.
Kasi Lemmons directed the Netflix limited series Self Made, and an episode of ABC's Women of the Movement.
3.
Kasi Lemmons is known as an actress having started her career with roles in commercials with McDonald's and Levi's.
4.
Kasi Lemmons made her film debut in Spike Lee's School Daze.
5.
Kasi Lemmons continued acting in Vampire's Kiss, The Silence of the Lambs, and Candyman.
6.
Kasi Lemmons was described by film scholar Wheeler Winston Dixon as "an ongoing testament to the creative possibilities of film".
7.
Kasi Lemmons's father was a biology teacher and her mother was a counselor who later became a psychologist.
8.
Kasi Lemmons's parents divorced when she was eight years old.
9.
Kasi Lemmons's mother moved the family to Newton, Massachusetts, because her mother wanted to go to Harvard to get her doctorate in education.
10.
Kasi Lemmons attended Commonwealth School, a private high school in Boston.
11.
Alongside her early interest in movies and acting, Kasi Lemmons harbored an interest in directing.
12.
In 1979, Kasi Lemmons made her acting debut in the television movie 11th Victim.
13.
Kasi Lemmons performed with the Boston Children's Theater and later attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts but transferred to UCLA to major in history.
14.
Kasi Lemmons eventually left UCLA and enrolled in the film program at the New School for Social Research.
15.
Kasi Lemmons played the first and only black girl who integrated to an all-white school.
16.
Kasi Lemmons's acting credits include episodic parts on shows like As the World Turns, Murder, She Wrote, The Cosby Show or ER and films such as Spike Lee's School Daze, Vampire's Kiss, the Academy Award winner for Best Picture The Silence of the Lambs, Candyman, Hard Target, Fear of a Black Hat, Gridlock'd and 'Til There Was You.
17.
In 1997, Lemmons directed the film Eve's Bayou starring Samuel L Jackson, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Diahann Carroll, and Jurnee Smollett.
18.
Kasi Lemmons began writing the screenplay for Eve's Bayou in 1992.
19.
In 2002 Kasi Lemmons conceived and helmed the tribute to Sidney Poitier for the 74th Annual Academy Award show.
20.
Kasi Lemmons adapted the Broadway musical Black Nativity and filmed it in 2013.
21.
Kasi Lemmons has been a board member of Film Independent and has contributed to Film Independent's Filmmaker Labs as a speaker and moderator.
22.
Kasi Lemmons continues to serve as an advisor to the Sundance Screenwriter and Filmmaker Labs.
23.
Kasi Lemmons is an Associate Arts Professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
24.
Kasi Lemmons adapted the novel Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles Blow into an opera libretto for the composer Terence Blanchard.
25.
Kasi Lemmons has been married to actor and director Vondie Curtis-Hall since 1995.
26.
Kasi Lemmons says she is primarily an artist: "I don't wake up every day saying I'm a black woman because it's too given, but I wake up every day feeling like an artist and I feel I'm an artist".