Tunie, Tamara

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Tamara Tunie

1959—

Actress

Tamara Tunie established a successful acting career with major roles on stage, in television, and in films. Since 1987 she has appeared in the daytime serial, As the World Turns. In addition, she has been a member of the cast of the prime-time series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, since 2000. Balancing her television work with film and stage roles, Tunie has become known as one of the busiest and most versatile African-American actresses of the early 2000s. In addition to her acting work, Tunie has also blossomed into a successful producer of Broadway productions.

Tunie enjoyed what she has described as a happy, normal childhood—though some of her friends were initially afraid to play at her house. She grew up with her four siblings above the family's funeral home in McKeesport, Pennsylvania; both of her parents were morticians. She considered it quite normal, she confided to Ebony interviewer Kevin Chappell, to live above dead people and learn not to play noisily during wakes. But "sometimes it was tough getting my friends to come over."

Though Tunie thought of becoming a doctor, she fell in love with performing while in high school and decided to pursue a career in the arts. She won a scholarship to Carnegie Mellon University, where she studied drama and earned a B.F.A. in 1981. She then moved to New York City and began seeking acting work, with the help and support of her acting coach, Billie Allen. In 1982 Tunie landed a role in the musical Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, in which Horne starred. It was a thrilling experience for the young actress to work onstage with Horne, an icon of African-American musical theater and one of Tunie's personal idols.

By the mid-1980s Tunie had found steady work in television. In 1987 she was cast as Jessica Griffin Harris, a district attorney on the daytime serial As the World Turns. Her portrayal of Harris as a strong, successful professional woman gained the actress a strong fan base as well as critical acclaim, and Harris became one of the most popular characters on the series. Having established her importance to the series, Tunie worked hard to persuade its writers to create a role for Allen. The writing team was persuaded and wrote Allen into the show as Harris's mother, Louise. In an interview on Pittsburgh's WPXI, Tunie observed that she enjoyed playing a character who got to investigate interesting things, adding that "What I love about it is that the cops always have to come to me for the answers, and I tend to have them."

Tunie landed a role on the prime-time hit series NYPD Blue in 1994, playing Lillian Fancy, wife of police lieutenant Arthur Fancy. She appeared in this recurring role through 1997, but the part never became more than a supporting one and it was eventually phased out. Meanwhile, Tunie had left As the World Turns in 1995 to pursue a wider range of acting opportunities. She landed parts in several feature films, working with such noted actors as Al Pacino, Keanu Reeves, and Charlize Theron in The Devil's Advocate and with Samuel L. Jackson in Eve's Bayou, in which she was cast as the narrator. Tunie also appeared in a small role in Snake Eyes, working with director Brian de Palma and a cast that included Nicolas Cage, Gary Sinese, John Heard, and Luis Guzman.

Within a year after returning to As the World Turns in 1999, Tunie found herself juggling roles in both daytime and prime-time series. In 2000 she joined the cast of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, playing medical examiner Melinda Warner. She was prosecuting criminals by day as a passionate district attorney, and conducting forensic examinations on victims of sex crimes by night. In addition, Tunie was cast in a third series, 24, in which she played Counterterrorism Unit (CTU) division director Alberta Green during the cult hit's first season in 2001. Working on this show, Tunie told the WPXI interviewer, was particularly exciting for her because the program broke so much new ground in the television medium.

Tunie worked with Samuel L. Jackson again in the film The Caveman's Valentine, playing the wife of Jackson's character, a paranoid schizophrenic who lives in a cave in New York City who becomes involved in a murder investigation. In 2007 she was in negotiations to play U.S. Ambassador Rebecca Lacie in The Koi Keeper, a film about the abduction of the young daughter of U.S. diplomats in Bangkok.

Though television and film roles have kept Tunie busy, she has also found time to do theater work. In 1995 she played Helen of Troy in the New York Shakespeare Festival production of Troilus and Cressida. That same year she appeared with Denzel Washington in an acclaimed production of Julius Caesar on Broadway. Tunie added another Shakespeare production to her resume in 2000 when she starred as Cleopatra in the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival production of Antony and Cleopatra. Reviewing this play for the New York Times, Alvin Klein noted Tunie's "thoroughly modern, trendy allure" in this role.

In 2006 the rock musical Spring Awakening, which Tunie co-produced, opened on Broadway. It heralded a promising new direction for Tunie's theater career. The show, directed by Michael Mayer and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, was a sensation, winning eight Tony Awards, including best musical. It also won four Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding Musical, as well as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best musical.

Following this spectacular success in her first project as a producer, Tunie signed on as a co-producer of the Broadway production of Radio Golf, the last work by Pittsburgh playwright August Wilson. Tunie told Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer Christopher Rawson that she would love to act in a Wilson play, but that "I think this [producer] was the role I was [meant] to play" in bringing Wilson's work to Broadway. "I'm passionate about Pittsburgh and theater, and August Wilson comprises both," she added. "My agenda is to bring as much African-American support to the table as possible." As co-producer, Tunie said, she hoped to be able to market the play successfully and attract substantial African-American audiences—including those who do not regularly attend plays. Critics hailed Radio Golf as a humane work that celebrated the dignity in ordinary lives. "Radio Golf is the coda to a magnificent and heroic life work that illuminated the historic destiny of former slaves and free men still enslaved," wrote John Heilpern in the New York Observer. "It gave shattering voice to the voiceless; it created leading roles for underemployed black actors of unsurpassed talent and brought an African-American audience into a predominantly white Broadway…. Theater will never forget August Wilson."

At a Glance …

Born on March 14, 1959, in McKeesport, PA; married Greg Generet (second marriage). Education: Carnegie Mellon University, BFA, 1981.

Career: Actress.

Memberships: Figure Skating in Harlem, vice-chair.

Awards: Antoinette Perry Award, co-producer, 2007, for Spring Awakening.

Addresses: Office—c/o As the World Turns, CBS-TV, Inc., 524 West 57th Street, Suite 5330, New York, NY 10019.

Aside from her career in entertainment, Tunie lives a full life. She lives in New York City with her second husband, Greg Generet, and serves as vice-chair of Figure Skating in Harlem, a not-for-profit organization that provides skating instruction and other opportunities for girls in Harlem.