Biography

Judyann Elder graduated from Emerson College in Boston as the first recipient of the Carol Burnett Award in the Performing Arts. She began her professional career in New York off-Broadway as a founding member and resident actor with the Tony Award-winning Negro Ensemble Company. She originated roles in the premiere productions of The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey; Daddy Goodness; Kongi's Harvest; God is a Guess What; and Ceremonies in Dark Old Men and toured with the company to London and Rome. She later made her Broadway debut at the Ambassador Theatre as Coretta King opposite Billy Dee Williams in I Have a Dream. She returns to regional stages as frequently as possible in such plays as The Heliotrope Bouquet, An American Daughter, The Old Settler, The Story, and Fences. A television veteran with innumerable credits, her favorites include her stint on Murphy Brown as Candice Bergen's obstetrician; her recurring role as Gina's mother on the hit series Martin; her series regular as Harriet Winslow for the final season of Family Matters; and her guest turn as Terri Hatcher's psychiatrist on Desperate Housewives. A breast cancer survivor and former legislative ambassador for the American Cancer Society, her dramatic role as a woman confronted with breast cancer on the show ER remains her most personally enduring. Her feature films include, among others, A Woman Called Moses with Cecily Tyson, Forget Paris opposite Billy Crystal, and Seven Pounds opposite Will Smith. For radio, she most recently portrayed Lena Younger in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun for LA TheatreWorks national radio series which received a 2012 Audie Award. Ms. Elder's work as an actor led to her foray into directing. Among her directorial credits: The Book of the Crazy African (Skylight Theatre); The Meeting (Inner City Cultural Center, LA and New Federal Theatre, NY); Ceremonies in Dark Old Men (Beverly Canon Theatre); The Member of the Wedding (LA Theatre Works); How's Your Love Life? and A Private Act (Robey Theatre Company). Her direction of Ceremonies in Dark Old Men at the Skirball Cultural Center for LA TheatreWorks radio series was broadcast nationally in February of 2010. She is an alumna of the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women where she produced and directed the short film, Behind God's Back, based on an Alice Walker story and starring Beau Bridges. She is the recipient of a Screenwriting Fellowship with Walt Disney Studios, was honored in 2005 with a NAACP Trailblazer Award and in 2010 received a Distinguished Alumni Award from Emerson College. An accomplished filmmaker, her most recent short, A Private Act, had its World Premiere at the St. Louis International Film Festival and is available on Vimeo. Having last directed The Whipping Man for LATheatreWorks, she returns in January of 2017, to direct Seven.

- IMDb mini biography by: Representative