Age: 63
female
Vanessa Estelle Williams (sometimes professionally credited as Vanessa A. Williams) is an American actress and producer. She is best known for her roles as Maxine Joseph–Chadway in the Showtime drama series, Soul Food (2000–04), for which she received NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series, and as Rhonda Blair in the first season of the Fox prime time soap opera, Melrose Place (1992–93). She is also known as Nino Brown's feisty gun moll, Keisha in the 1991 crime drama film, New Jack City and as Anne-Marie McCoy in the first and fourth of the Candyman films. Though not related, she is sometimes confused with American actress, singer, and former Miss America 1984, Vanessa L. Williams. Both women were also, coincidentally, born in New York in the same year. In addition, Vanessa A. Williams starred in the television soap opera, Soul Food, while Vanessa L. Williams starred in the original film.
Soul Food is told through the eyes of 11-year-old Ahmad (Hammond), following the trials of the Joseph family, a close-knit Chicago family that gets together to have Sunday dinner every week, with plenty of soul food to go around. Mother (Big Mama) Joe (Hall) has three daughters, who each have had varying success in life: oldest daughter Teri (Williams) has become a successful lawyer, but has a strained relationship with younger sister Maxine (Fox) who stole and eventually married Teri's former boyfriend, Kenny (Sams). Teri is currently married to Miles (Beach), a lawyer who quit his job to pursue his dream of being an R&B musician, which Teri doesn't support. Youngest daughter Robin (Long)—nicknamed "Bird"—has just opened a barbershop/beauty parlor and gotten married to Lem (Phifer), an ex-convict.
