Tamara Tunie
Tamara Tunie
Tamara Renee Tunieis an American film, stage, and television actress, director, and producer. She is best known for her portrayal of attorney Jessica Griffin on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns, and medical examiner Melinda Warner on the NBC police drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. From 2000 to 2007, she appeared on both series simultaneously. Tunie has also appeared in film, most notably playing the key supporting role of Margaret Thomason in the 2012 film Flight...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActress
Date of Birth14 March 1959
CountryUnited States of America
The first thing I do is brush my teeth - we like to start the morning with fresh breath - and put on my pajamas and meander down to the kitchen for a glass of orange juice. No coffee. No caffeine.
I took the whole college prep trajectory, and then in my senior year of high school, I decided that performing was something that I had always done as a kid, and I loved it... I said, 'This makes people happy when I do this, I feel good, I get to pretend and explore other areas and learn so much'.
I grew up in Pittsburgh, and regularly, my parents would take us to the Holiday House Supper Club to see acts like Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughn, Ben Vereen, Freda Payne, Stephanie Mills, and The Temptations, to name a few.
I'm always happy and most at home on the stage. I love film and television, but I love live performance... your immediacy with the audience, it makes all the difference in the world.
I'm a rabid Steelers fan: I'm originally from Pittsburgh. So if the Giants or Pittsburgh are playing, the rest of Sunday is all about food and football.
I wake up late, say 10 or 11, because we've usually been out and about town until 2 or 3 A.M. listening to music at the jazz clubs or hitting the jazz clubs post-theater.
I was the first African-American woman to play Maggie in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.' It was at the Virginia State Theatre, and we turned Richmond upside down.
There was a time, actually, when I hadn't been singing, and I'd lost a lot of my ability. My range had shrunk.
I wanted to make a home that was similar to the kind of home that my mother made. To be able to create something like that in my adopted city, New York City, one of the toughest cities on the planet, is really special.
I grew up in a funeral home, born and raised, and everyone was always like, 'Well, what was that like?' and I was like, 'It was normal', because it's all I knew.
All you have is yourself and what you have to present, and just focus on that. And if you can walk out of the audition and say to yourself, 'I hit all my beats,' 'I accomplished my emotional honesty,' or 'I remembered my words,' then that's winning.
We sit and read the paper in conjunction with having a little breakfast. Usually fruit salad, or I make myself a smoothie with rice milk, coconut water and yogurt.
When I first moved to New York, all I did was musical theater. That's what I studied at Carnegie Mellon University.
You have to continue to grow and evolve as individuals in order for your marriage to evolve. It takes two pillars to support a structure. If those two pillars become one, you have a structure that teeters.