Actress. She was an American award-winning actress, known for her portrayal of strong African American women. Her career spanned six decades in both the theater and on film. The daughter of immigrants from the West Indies, she began her career as a model for "Ebony," "Jet," "Harper's Bazaar," and "Vogue" magazines. Along with Maya Angelou, James Earl Jones, and Louis Gossett, Jr., she was part of the original cast of the play "The Blacks: A Clown Shoe." It was the longest running off-Broadway non-musical production of the 1960s. She appeared in the Broadway productions of "Tiger Tiger Burning Bright" in 1962, "A Hand is on the Gate" in 1966, "Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights" in 1968, and "The Corn is Green" in 1983. She returned to the stage in 2013 as Carrie Watts in "The Trip to Bountiful," a role that garnered her a Tony Award. She also starred in the 2014 television movie of the same name. Her breakthrough role was in the movie "Sounder" in 1972 as Rebecca, a sharecropper's wife, and she was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. In 1974 she played the title role in the television movie "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," the story of a black woman born as a slave in the 1850s. Her story is told through an interview with a journalist during the Civil Rights movement when Jane is 110 years old. The film received nine Emmy Awards, with Tyson receiving the Emmy for Best Lead Actress in a Drama and the Emmy for Actress of the Year – Special. She appeared in the 1977 television mini-series "Roots", and "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All" in 1994, which gave her a third Emmy. She received an Emmy nomination for portraying Coretta Scott King in the 1978 television mini-series "King," and two NAACP Image awards for the films "The Marva Collins Story" in 1981 and "Samaritan: The Mitch Snyder Story" in 1986. She became the first African American to star in a television drama as Jane Foster in "Eastside/Westside" from 1963 to 1964 and played a civil rights activist in the series "Sweet Justice" from 1994 to 1995. She was cast in the television drama "How to Get Away with Murder" from 2014 to 2020 as Ophelia Harkness, the mother of Viola Davis' character, a role which earned her five Emmy nominations. She received a Screen Actors Guild Award for "The Help" in 2012 and an honorary Oscar award in 2019, becoming the first African American woman to receive the honor. She was the Kennedy Center Honoree in 2015; and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2018, and the Television Hall of Fame in 2020. In 2016 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. In her autobiography "Just as I Am" that was released shortly before her death, she reveals she initially hung up on the aide calling to notify her of the honor because she thought it was a prank. She had a tumultuous relationship with jazz musician Miles Davis in the 1960s and she is featured on the cover of his 1967 album "Sorcerer." After his marriage and subsequent divorce, they were married at the home of actor Bill Cosby in 1981. They remained married until she filed for divorce two years before his death in 1991.