(1972-)

Who Is Tracee Ellis Ross?

The daughter of Diana Ross, after college, Tracee Ellis Ross worked in the magazine industry, which led her to modeling and subsequently acting. She got her first big acting break with a role in the TV series Girlfriends, which ran from 2000 until 2008. After appearing on several other shows and in movies, in 2014, Ross landed another starring role in the hit series Black-ish. In 2016, Ross won a Golden Globe for her work on the show.

Early Years

Tracee Ellis Ross was born on October 29, 1972, in Los Angeles, California, to legendary Motown singer Diana Ross and music manager Robert Ellis Silberstein. She attended Brown University (where she was friends with singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik) and earned a bachelor’s degree in theater arts in 1994.

After graduation, Ross began working in the fashion industry as an editor for magazines such as Mirabella and New York, and the exposure to the industry helped her segue into modeling. Ross was featured in many magazines, landing on the cover of Essence and Jet, among others, and posing for such luminaries as Herb Ritts and Francesco Scavullo.

Early Acting Roles and ‘Girlfriends’

Ross soon made a transition into acting, and the late 1990s saw her land roles in a string of movies, including Far Harbor (1996), Sue (1997) and A Fare to Remember (1999). She also took on hosting duties of the Lifetime talk show The Dish for a year (1997) and appeared in a few more movies at the turn of the century, including Hanging Up and In the Weeds, both in 2000.

That would also be the year Ross caught her big break and got a real taste of success, snagging the part of Joan Clayton on the TV series Girlfriends. The sitcom was a success, and the weekly exposure helped Ross get more movie parts. But TV would become her focus, and Girlfriends kept her busy for nearly the entire decade across more than 170 episodes.

Besides being a ratings hit and launch pad for Ross’s career, Girlfriends brought a slew of critical attention to the actress’s doorstep in the form of seven NAACP Image Award nominations and two wins (2007 and 2009, both for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series) and a BET Comedy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (2005). In the midst of Girlfriends‘long run, Ross managed to squeeze in some film work as well, including Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls (2007), with Idris Elba and Gabrielle Union, and Labor Pains, featuring Lindsay Lohan (2011).

Hit Show ‘Black-ish’

After Girlfriends came to an end in 2008, Ross worked on other series, such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, appearing in a handful of episodes, and Reed Between the Lines, on which she starred opposite Malcolm Jamal Warner in 2011.

In 2014, Ross began a new gig as one of the stars of the primetime comedy Black-ish, which became a hit and gave her yet another high-profile role. In the show, she plays successful physician Dr. Rainbow Johnson opposite Anthony Anderson, who plays her husband Dre. The two are parents of four children in an upper-class African American family. Laurence Fishburne also stars in the series as Ross’s father-in-law.

Ross has received multiple honors for her role on Black-ish including two NAACP Awards for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series in 2015 and 2016. In 2016, she was also nominated for a Critics’ Choice Television Award and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy. In her Golden Globe acceptance speech, Ross said: “This is for all of the women, women of color and colorful people, whose stories, ideas, thoughts are not always considered worthy, and valid and important. But I want you to know that I see you. We see you.”

She also highlighted the show’s role in promoting diversity on television. “It is an honor to be on this show, ‘Black-ish,’ to continue expanding the way we are seen and known, and to show the magic and the beauty and the sameness of a story, and stories that are outside of where the industry usually looks,” she said.

Additional Projects

Multidimensional, Ross has kept busy in other venues when not working on her series. She appeared in the 2011 short film anthology Five on Lifetime, a project which focused on breast cancer awareness, and in New York and Los Angeles stage productions of Love, Loss, and What I Wore; co-hosted Black Girls Rock, a BET awards show, in 2013; and was featured in two Kanye West videos: The New Workout Plan (2004) and Touch the Sky (2006).

Ross has also entered the motivational speaker realm, teaching a workshop called “Tapping Into Your Creative Well,” and is active with Aviva Family and Children Services in Los Angeles and the national program Big Brother Big Sister. For her efforts, Ross has been honored by the Los Angeles Urban League as Volunteer of the Year.

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QUICK FACTS

• Birth Year: 1972
• Birth date: October 29, 1972
• Birth State: California
• Birth City: Los Angeles
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: Tracee Ellis Ross is an American actress known for roles on such TV shows as ‘Girlfriends’ and ‘Black-ish.’
• Industries
• Television
• Astrological Sign: Scorpio
• Schools
• Brown University

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Tracee Ellis Ross Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/actors/tracee-ellis-ross
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: September 15, 2020
• Original Published Date: July 30, 2015

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QUOTES

• As a mother and a therapist, Carla [from ‘Reed Between the Lines’] is very much about self-acceptance and celebrating who you are, which is also very much a motto of mine.
• My mom had beautiful clothes; my mom is elegant; my mom is glamorous. But my mom is also really real, and I grew up with a mother who had babies crawling on her head and spitting up on her when she was wearing gorgeous, expensive things, and it was never an issue.
• I just really strongly promote pushing against this culture of perfection. I mean, I’m sorry, for me, Spanx don’t feel good. I’ve tried one of those waist-trainer things on — that hurt like the bejesus. I could barely get it closed, and I bought the size bigger than they said I should buy.
• What I firmly believe is that [‘Black-ish’] is not a story about a family that happens to be Black. This is a story about a family that is Black dealing with life. It’s not about them being Black, but they are Black. And it’s actually one of the things that I love about the show, because…it’s not about letting go of who you are, but, instead, owning your truth unapologetically.
• My mom always had big and natural textured hair, so there was nothing weird about it for me. My mom is always saying the bigger the better. Like, make your hair bigger, I love it when it’s out, I love it when it’s big. That’s my mom.