Nicholas, Denise, 1944-

Actress and fiction writer Denise Nicholas was born Donna Denise Nicholas on July 12th in Detroit, Michigan to Louise and Otto Nicholas. She grew up in Milan, Michigan, just south of Ann Arbor. After she graduated from Milan High School, she attended the University of Michigan. In 1963, she met Gilbert Moses, then a stage actor. The two married, and in 1964, Nicholas and Moses moved to Jackson, Mississippi.

Nicholas joined Moses' Free Southern Theater and with a small troupe of actors performed significant plays for rural African-American audiences many of whom had never seen live theater before. They toured Ossie Davis'Purlie Victorious, Samuel Beckett's,Waiting for Godotas well as anEvening of Poetry and Song. Their production ofIn White Americatoured not only in Mississippi and Louisiana, but also in New York City. In 1965, the theater company moved its base of operations to New Orleans, Louisiana. Nicholas separated from Moses and the two were divorced in 1966.

Nicholas then moved to New York City and, in 1967, was one of the first members of the famous Negro Ensemble Company. She studied with dance instructor Louis Johnson and voice instructor Kristin Linklater and performed in a production of German dramatist Peter Weiss'Song for Lusitanian Bogey. The following year, she acted in a number of plays with the company, includingSummer of the Seventeenth Doll,Kongi's HarvestandDaddy Goodness. That same year, Nicholas was cast in her first television role, as a character on the ABC-TV seriesIt Takes a Thief, an action-adventure series that aired until 1970.

In 1969, she was cast as "Liz McIntyre" on the popular television seriesRoom 222, about an American history class at Walt Whitman High School in Los Angeles, California. The following year, she was nominated for an Emmy Award and two Golden Globes for her work onRoom 222. Nicholas also received four NAACP Image Awards during her career. In 1972, she was cast inBlacula, a blaxploitation horror movie based onDraculawith William Marshall playing the title character. Throughout the 1970s, she continued to take prominent roles in films, including a series of movies with Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby that included 1975'sLet's Do It Againand 1977'sA Piece of the Action.

In 1981, she married Jim Hill, a Los Angeles sportscaster with KCBS-TV. In the early 1980s, she continued working on the stage, and was featured inVoices of Our People: In Celebration of Black Poetryfor PBS. In 1987, Nicholas earned her B.A. degree in drama from the University of Southern California, and began teaching at the college that same year. In 1988, she returned to television, starring inIn the Heat of the Nightas Harriet DeLong, and in 1991 began writing for the program as well. In 1990, Nicholas again starred alongside Bill Cosby inGhost Dad.

In 2005, Nicholas' first novel,Freshwater Road, was published to widespread critical acclaim.New York Newsdaycalled it, "perhaps the best work of fiction about the Civil Rights Movement." In 2006, the novel won the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction. That same year, the book won the American Library Association's Black Caucus Award for Debut Fiction.

Denise Nicholas was interviewed byThe HistoryMakerson May 19, 2007.