Vanessa Williams is an actress and singer known for her Miss America scandal and her roles on television shows such as Ugly Betty.
In 1983, Vanessa Williams made history when she was crowned the first African-American Miss America. But soon thereafter, nude photos of Williams were plastered on the pages of Penthouse magazine. Horrified, the Miss America pageant board asked Williams to resign her post. Williams soon started a singing career, finding great success and then branching out into acting, again with success.
Entertainer Vanessa Lynn Williams was born on March 18, 1963, in Bronx, New York. Williams’s parents, Milton and Helen, both worked as music educators. They moved Vanessa and her brother, Chris, to the upscale suburbs of Millwood, New York, when Vanessa was 12 months old, so they could take jobs as music teachers in Millwood’s public school system.
Music was an integral part of Vanessa’s early life, and by the time she was 10, she had devoted herself almost completely to music and dance. With plans to become the first African-American Rockette, she studied classical and jazz dance as well as theatre arts. She also excelled at French horn, piano, and violin. A natural performer and outgoing student, Williams was a high achiever who landed the Presidential Scholarship for Drama at graduation and gained entry into the Carnegie Mellon University theater arts program in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Although she was only one of 12 students accepted into Carnegie Mellon’s program that year, Williams decided to attend Syracuse University in upstate New York instead….
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