FADE TO BLACK
Cicely Tyson (1924-2021)
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Very few actors can boast of a back catalogue as prodigious as that of Cicely Tyson. Born in Harlem in 1924, Tyson turned to acting after a successful modelling career in which she graced the covers of esteemed magazines including Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. After honing her craft in off-Broadway productions and several small feature films from 1957 onwards, Tyson’s breakout performance came in the 1972 film Sounder as the matriarch of a poor Black sharecropping family in the Depression-plagued South. Her performance garnered her only Oscar nomination, and though she
