Cicely Tyson, a pioneer, a style icon and an award-winning actress, is perhaps best known for roles playing a strong and wise maternal figure. With her on-screen career astonishingly spanning more than six decades, it’s without a doubt that Cicely Tyson is indeed the embodiment of an icon.
Ms Tyson is best recognised for her role in movies such as The Help (2011), The Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005) and TV shows like How To Get Away With Murder (2015-2018) and House of Cards (2016). It’s no wonder she has been awarded three Primetime Emmy Awards, a Black Reel Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Tony award and an honorary Academy Award too!
Cicely Tyson (centre) starring with Kerry Washington (left) and Viola Davis (right) in a special crossover episode between Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder in 2018
To honour the ageless beauty turning 94 this week (19th December), we have compiled a list of some of the most revolutionary and ground-breaking moments in her career:
- As a teenager, she caught the eye of a photographer from Ebony magazine who offered a career in modelling.
- Cicely Tyson unknowingly founded the natural hair movement in 1963 by deciding to wear her hair natural for her role in East Side/West Side because she knew the character wouldn’t have had chemically straightened hair.
- In East Side/West Side (1963) , she was the first African American to appear as a series regular on a prime time dramatic television series.
- The first African American actress to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Television Movie for her role in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974).
- When Cicely had trouble finding work she refused Blaxploitation films for a pay check, instead she was selective about the roles she chose as she was very conscious of how Black people were being portrayed in the media.
- Cicely Tyson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award in 2016, which is the highest civilian honour in the United States, presented by the former president Barack Obama.
- In 2018 she attended the Governors Ball to receive an honorary award for her contribution to the film industry, making her the first Black woman to ever win the honour.
