A versatile, attractive black character player of film and TV, Alfre Woodard pushed the art of deadpan to new heights as the hotel manager in Robert Altman's droll satire "Health" (1979). Eventually, she would create a rich gallery of characterizations which, whether poverty-stricken or upper class, educated or not, never lost a certain instinctual savvy and realistic viewpoint.

Raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Woodard started out a "stone-head hippie, semi-black nationalist" at Boston University, from which she graduated in 1974. She went on to stage work at Washington, DC's Arena Theatre but landed