Jasmine Guy

Jasmine Guy (born March 10, 1962) is an American actress, director, singer and dancer. She is best known for her starring role as Whitley Marion Gilbert–Wayne on The Cosby Show spinoff NBC comedy sitcom A Different World (1987–1993), in which she won four consecutive NAACP Image Awards from 1990 through 1993 for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role. 2Early life Born in Boston, Massachusetts, to an African-American father and European-American mother, Jasmine was raised in the affluent historic Collier Heights neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, where she attended what was then called the Northside Performing Arts High School, later renamed North Atlanta High School. Her mother, the former Jaye Rudolph (born 1930), was a former high-school teacher, and her father, the Reverend William Guy (born 1928), was pastor of the historic Friendship Baptist Church of Atlanta, which served as an early home to Spelman College; he was also a college instructor in philosophy and religion. At the age of seventeen, Jasmine moved to New York City to study dance at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. 2Acting career 3Television roles Guy began her television career with a non-speaking role, as a dancer, in seven episodes of the 1982 television series Fame under the direction of choreographer Debbie Allen. Following a move to California, she appeared in a 1991 episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as Kayla, one of Will Smith's girlfriends. In 1992, Guy appeared in CBS's Stompin' at the Savoy alongside Vanessa Williams, again under the direction of Debbie Allen, and in 1993, she played the mother of Halle Berry's character in the CBS TV mini-series Alex Haley's Queen. This was based on Haley's book Queen: The Story of an American Family, a companion volume to his earlier Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which itself had been converted to a television mini-series. In 1995, Guy appeared as Peter Burns's love interest, Caitlin Mills, on two episodes of Melrose Place, and in 1996, she appeared on Living Single, playing a psychologist advising Khadijah, who had begun exhibiting symptoms of anxiet