Jasmine Guy

Jasmine Guy (born March 10, 1962 in Atlanta, Georgia) is perphaps best known for her role as the beautiful but incredibly annoying Whitley on the hit NBC-TV sitcom, A Different World. Thankfully, in person she is not at all like Whitley.

Jasmine Guy Biography

Jasmine has a variety of talents: Acting, singing and dancing. In 1990, Jasmine released a self-titled album with backing vocals on a few songs from her "A Different World" co-star, Cree Summer. She's appeared on the stage in productions of "Grease" and "Chicago" as well as numerous TV and film roles.

Born to an African American father (1928-) and a Portuguese American mother (1930-),Jasmine was raised in the affluent historic Collier Heights neighborhood of Atlanta, where she attended the former Northside Performing Arts High School (which merged with North Fulton High School to form North Atlanta High School). Her mother's name is Jaye Rudolph, and her father, the Reverend William Guy, was pastor of the historic Friendship Baptist Church of Atlanta, which served as an early home to [Spelman College]]) She later studied dance at Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in New York City in 1981.

During the run of A Different World, she released her self-titled debut album in 1990, which spawned three singles: "Try Me", "Another Like My Lover", and "Just Want to Hold You." Although the album remains uncertified with exact sells unknown due to being released before Nielsen Soundscan development, the project was considered an overall success. In the spring of 2006, Jasmine Guy spoke to the graduating class at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and revealed that she planned to record a second album. She commented that of all the entertainment industries, the music industry was the worst. She intended to sell her new album online herself and not through a major label, similar to the marketing strategy used by Prince.

Jasmine was also friends with O. J. Simpson. She still is very close friends with Kadeem Hardison and many other former cast mates. Guy's maternal grandmother (a native of Portugal) died on July 6, 2002 at the age of 100. Jasmine also is a member of Sigma Gamma Rho sorority.

Television roles

Jasmine began her television career playing as an extra in the 1982 series adaptation of Fame. She later had a role in an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air where she played Kayla, one of Will Smith's girlfriends. In an appearance on Living Single, Guy played a psychologist who advised Khadijah when she began exhibiting symptoms of bipolar disorder. Guy appeared as Caitlin Mills on three episodes of the FOX-TV prime time soap Melrose Place, as Peter Burns' love interest.

She also made a cameo appearances on the Moesha spin-off The Parkers, and the That's So Raven episode "Checkin' Out" as a famous fashion photographer named Pistache. In 1992, she played the mother of Halle Berry in the TV adaptation of Queen: The Story of an American Family, based on the book by Alex Haley.

Jasmine had a starring role in Dead Like Me, a Showtime series which ran from (2003–2004). She played Roxy Harvey in 23 episodes, and starred in the feature film Dead Like Me: Life After Death, which was released in 2009. In the PBS math-based cartoon Cyberchase, Guy has lent her voice to two characters: Ava, the queen of the cybersite Symmetria, and the recurring Ms. Fileshare the Cybrarian, owner of the Cybrary, or library. She also had the recurring role of Kathleen, a fallen angel in the CBS Network Drama Touched by an Angel.

Jasmine recently appeared in The CW series The Vampire Diaries as Sheila "Grams" Bennett, the grandmother of Bonnie (Katerina Graham), who turned out to be a descendant of Salem Witches.

She also appeared on the TV show "Linc's".

Guy guest starred in the second season of Lifetime's Drop Dead Diva as a judge in Episode 9 "Last Year's Model."

On September 17 2011, Jasmine sang a slightly off-key version of "Poor Wayfaring Stranger" and a far-more-than-slightly off-key version of "Believe in Yourself" (from The Wiz) on the Georgia Public Television coverage of the 33rd Georgia Music Hall of Fame Awards in support of the induction of Kenny Leon. She received polite applause.

Film roles

Early in the run of the TV series that made her famous, Jasmine took a major film role playing Dominique La Rue in 1989's Harlem Nights, starring Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. In the film, Pryor's character, Harlem "Sugar" Ray, is the owner of an illegal casino, who contends with the pressures of vicious gangsters and corrupt policemen who want to see him go out of business in 1930s Harlem. Guy played the girlfriend of the group's nemesis, who set out to seduce and kill Murphy. Jasmine also had a role in the 1988 Spike Lee musical-drama film School Daze as Dina, a member of the light-skinned, straight-haired African American women of Gamma Ray (a women's auxiliary to the Gamma Phi Gamma fraternity). Jasmine also provided the voice of Sawyer Cat in the Warner Bros. animated film Cats Don't Dance. Jasmine Guy also appeared in Stompin' at the Savoy. She also read as Mary Estes Peters in the 2003 HBO documentary, "Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narrative", the documentary premiered during Black History month. The slave narratives were based on the WPA slave interviews conducted during the 1930s with over two thousand former slaves. In 2009, Guy performed in The People Speak a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States”.[5]

Stage acting work

Jasmine has performed in several Broadway shows, appearing as Crow in The Wiz, Mickey in Leader of the Pack, Betty Rizzo in Grease and as Velma Kelly in Chicago. On April 6, 2009, Playbill reported Guy would star in a True Colors Theatre Company production of Pearl Cleage's Blues for an Alabama Sky. Directed by Andrea Frye, the show is a last minute addition to the company's season and is set to open May 4 in Atlanta.[6] A surprise announcement, it comes on the heels of Guy's held-over run in True Colors' Miss Evers' Boys, which also starred TC Carson (Living Single).

Jasmine also directed the World Premiere of the musical I Dream performed, in July 2010, on the Alliance Stage of the Woodruff Arts Centre in Atlanta. In 2010, Guy was apart of the cast of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and Alliance Theatre’s co-production of Pearl Cleage’s “The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One-Hundred Years.” The play ran Sept. 24 through Oct. 3 at ASF and then moved to Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre for performances on Oct. 20 thru Nov. 14. She currently performs in a play called Fool For Love which plays at The Balter Theatre in Atlanta Georgia

Radio appearances

The actress recorded a public service announcement for Deejay Ra's 'Hip-Hop Literacy' campaign, encouraging reading of books about Tupac Shakur.

Jasmine Guy Personal life

She married Terrence Duckett in 1998. The couple has one child, a girl named Imani, born in 1999. On April 8, 2008, People reported that the actress and her husband of nearly 10 years were divorcing due to irreconcilable differences.

Jasmine was also a good friend of slain rapper Tupac Shakur, whom she met through her costar on A Different World, Jada Pinkett Smith. Guy collaborated with Shakur's mother, Afeni, to write a biography of her life as a former Black Panther. The book, "Afeni Shakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary," was published in 2005 by Simon and Schuster and received critical acclaim for its poignancy.