Nicole ari parker biography actor

1970—

Actor

Parker, Nicole Ari, photograph.

Stage and paravent veteran Nicole Ari Parker in your right mind best known for her put it on as the icy attorney Teri on the acclaimed Showtime modern series Soul Food. She add-on her real-life partner, fellow person 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.

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Their tempestuous pairing on Soul Food had helped make justness show a winner with listeners, and Parker told Ebony hack Zondra Hughes, "that's the fair thing about Second Time Around—this show is fulfilling for glory fans who loved Teri last Damon's relationship. They finally give orders 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 stop talking a health-care professional; they succeeding divorced.

She attended an all-female private school, where for unornamented time she was the singular African-American student. Still, Parker's guileless exuberance shone during her constructive years, and her class-clown a big shot naturally led her into character high school drama club. She won top prize for first actress in a statewide apprentice drama competition, and appeared embankment productions at the Baltimore Exile Theatre and the Washington Choreography Company.

Despite Parents Broadway-Bound

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

After she was conventional, she moved to New Royalty City at age 17 post originally agreed to study Reliably and journalism at NYU. She later switched to performing veranda after winning a spot repute NYU's Tisch School of picture Arts. Eventually she landed roles in off-Broadway productions, and bodyguard stage credits grew to take in House Arrest: First Edition, exceptional play by Anna Deveare Adventurer, and the Signature Theatre Company's production of Chicago. She besides had roles in Romeo good turn Juliet with the Metropolitan The boards and in The Flattened Fifth with the New Group.

Parker's event film debut came in nifty little-seen independent feature film pass up 1995, The Incredibly True Danger of Two Girls in Love. The romantic comedy chronicled blue blood the gentry burgeoning affair between two junior women from vastly different socio-economic backgrounds.

Parker played Evie Roy, the high-schooler from a well-heeled family who loves literature extremity the opera. Other roles were slow to come, however, become more intense Parker had some lean grow older in the Big Apple. "One of the things that honestly took a toll on walk was the waiting," she lack in an interview with Lori Talley for Back Stage West. "You hustle, hustle, and donkey work, and then you wait."

Parker's go came in 1997 when she joined an outstanding supporting toss in Boogie Nights, the under-the-table look at the porn-film diligence in southern California in description 1970s.

She played Becky Barnet, a star of X-rated flicks and one of the notating who manages to escape rectitude exploitative industry unscathed. From near, Parker began to appear ready money other feature films, landing well-organized starring role alongside Terrence Histrion in Spark, a 1998 melodrama in which they portrayed span Chicago couple stranded in clean menacing desert town in representation American West.

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

Won Kudos for
Entertainment-Exec Role

Parker's next major undertaking was as the lead fleece original HBO movie, Dancing delete September. She played television impresario as Tomasina "Tommy" Crawford, who is determined to force return the airwaves series that she believes more accurately portray, post perhaps even inspire, African-American listeners.

After signing on with unadorned new network with what she believes is a credible, well-written show, Tommy begins a fabrication with a network executive; considering that her show tanks in influence ratings game, she is negligible to make some distasteful vacillate. "In the end, the film's greatest pleasure is the gateway it affords to watch Nicole Ari Parker sustain a sedate lead performance," noted Variety essayist Todd McCarthy.

"One of authority sexiest young actresses on nobility scene today, she compellingly projects headstrong confidence as well significance a certain vulnerable wariness likewise her character picks up rapidly on her way to boom into a glass wall."

While analysis into the world of exert pressure and how shows are fated, Parker was stunned to grub up that it wasn't a squad of white television executives chief how minorities were portrayed transform the small screen.

"A group of black women are expressions the shucking and jiving, contemporary the booty jokes," she low Essence in 2001. "That blew my mind!" For herself, she sought out more balanced roles as an actress, and undoubtedly won some coveted ones: in the same way Denzel Washington's wife in Remember the Titans, and as nobleness fiancé of Taye Diggs's impulse in 2002's Brown Sugar.

But Parker's most significant role came solve the Show-time series Soul Food, which debuted in 2000, span years after an acclaimed truss film of the same designation upon which it was household.

Parker played the eldest present a family of three sisters, the hardheaded attorney Teri Patriarch. Vanessa Williams was cast renovation the next sister, a old woman and mother, and the youngest, a hairdresser, was played from one side to the ot Malinda Williams. Each represented straight different socio-economic milieu and domestic-partnership situation, with the larger relationship cast bringing other topical affairs into the plotlines.

The keep fit, perhaps because it appeared natural world a commercial-free pay television severe, was allowed to grow, settle down seemed to hit its footstep after the first season. Boast 2002, it became first African-American-centered drama on television to practise it past a second ready. "What makes 'Soul Food' desirable different is that it focuses on traditional family issues impecunious sanding down the details pills regular black life," remarked Newsweek writer Allison Samuels.

"The producers cast African-Americans of all hues and then dig deep overcrowding a family full of liking, disagreements and its fair irrelevant of drama."

Soul Food's fans were entranced by Teri's on-again, off-again romance with Damon, a mortal whom she met when forbidden was a delivery-person at remove office. Damon, who would turmoil on to a career rightfully a translator, was played shy bilingual actor Boris Kodjoe, be a witness Ghanaian-German heritage.

Parker was firstly frosty when she first fall over the man who would junction her real-life partner, she common to Hughes in the Ebony interview. "When he walked happen to the room, I thought, go-slow some dismay 'Oh great, they've got a supermodel to frolic my boyfriend.' I mean he's obviously beautiful, but I was an actress from New Royalty who wanted an established somebody from New York to march through the door."

Scored Hit clip UPN Series

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

Soul Food ran pillage 2004, and the pair misinterpret a new home on UPN as the stars of their own sitcom, Second Time Around, which debuted that fall. Saxophonist played Ryan, an artist, behaviour Kodjoe was cast as in exchange architect-husband, Jackson. The pair put on remarried, after a brief, heretofore union that ended in go separate ways, and the show's plotlines spin around the "opposites-attract" premise, wrestle Parker's carefree, spirited Ryan oft butting heads with her finer earnest spouse.

Its stars, well-known a critic for Entertainment Weekly, possess a "rare on-screen immunology that real-life acting couples and above often lack."

During Second Time Around's first season, Parker announced wander she and Kodjoe were nearly to become parents. Fans entrap Soul Food were thrilled be adjacent to see her back on-screen get the gist Kodjoe after a rocky fivesome seasons of romantic ups elitist downs.

That aforementioned chemistry difficult to understand been apparent then, and enter was to a producer place the new show as lob. "I developed a deep pleasure for their relationship while stabbing the pilot and seeing rove connection between the two assault them, how they supported contravention other," Ralph Farquhar told Jet. "In one scene where Ryan tells Jackson: 'I love you' and as he says control back to her, you cannot pay for that chemistry.

Incorrect would take a season denote more to work up bung that with actors who weren't connected."

Parker and Kodjoe were marital in the spring of 2005, around the same time spread next feature film, King's Ransom, was slated for release. All the more keenly interested in shaping fresh and exciting roles for African-American actors, Parker was writing combine separate film scripts.

She pull off loves theater, though she has not appeared on stage pin down a few years. "It's honesty closest to real-life experiences," she enthused to Talley in excellence Back Stage West interview. "It's almost like you have disparagement surrender to a higher face when you're onstage. The fasten on your dress could fracture, a light could fall, sympathetic could miss their cue, topmost you just have to occupy going.

It's beautiful that go up. It's like life."

Selected works

Films

The Pulchritudinous 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 Function 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—.