A bright, inventive sketch player and comic actor whose portrayals of such characters as Zoraida, the in-your-face NBC page, and Queen Shaniqua, the Afrocentric critic, on four seasons of "Saturday Night Live" (1991-95) put her on the upward career tract.Ellen Cleghorne was raised in the projects of Brooklyn, and after earning a degree at Hunter College on Manhattan's Upper East Side, began performing standup in clubs throughout New York City. She also performed with "The Family, Inc.", a troupe which performed mainly at prisons, and appeared in two productions with the New York Shakespeare
Performed in comedy clubs and also appeared Off-Broadway and in the New York Shakespeare Festival's productions of "Marriage Proposal" and "Looking for Tomorrow"
