Биография Bill Cosby
Dr. William Henry «Bill» Cosby, Jr. is an American actor and comedian.
He was the first black man to star in his own television series, and also broke racial boundaries with his stand-up comedy career in the 1960s and 1970s. After I Spy, he starred in other series, but none were very successful until his sitcom, The Cosby Show in the mid-1980s. The Cosby Show was a runaway hit, and notable for being one of the first to star a well-to-do middle-class Black family. During the 1980s, Cosby was among the highest-paid entertainers in the United States.
His popularity has diminished somewhat in recent years, and his reputation has suffered due to allegations of sexual harassment, but overall Cosby remains an icon of popular culture.
Controversy.
In 1997, Cosby was the target of allegations from Autumn Jackson, a young woman who claimed she was his daughter. In court, Cosby testified that he had sex once with Jackson’s mother, when he was already
In January 2005 a woman alleged she was drugged and fondled by Cosby. The woman made the allegations nine months after it allegedly took place. In a statement from Cosby’s publicist, Cosby’s attorney said, «the charges are categorically false and we have no further comment».
In February 2005 a second woman, California lawyer Tamara Green, came forward alleging that in the 1970s she was drugged and groped by Cosby. She claims that as she slipped under the influence of the drug, Cosby attempted to undress her, and as she grew to understand what was occurring she stated that if he tried to rape her he would have to kill her. Upon realizing she would not, in her words, «be put into submission» he left her in her apartment with two one-hundred-dollar bills. Cosby’s attorney continues to deny any merit to the allegations, claiming «Mr. Cosby does not have any knowledge of a woman named Tamara Green or Tamara Lucia».
While prosecutors have declined to press charges against Cosby, the first accuser has filed a federal civil suit against the performer. Attorneys for the woman suing Bill Cosby for sexual assault claim that at least ten other women are prepared to testify about «prior similar sexual assaults and/or drugging incidents» perpetrated by the comedian.
Career.
Cosby was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at Northwest Philadelphia’s Germantown Hospital at 3:00 A. M. He joined the Navy in tenth grade and completed high school through correspondence courses. Later, he won an athletic scholarship to Temple University. After working as a bartender for several years, he began his career as a stand-up comic, winning fame for his performances and a series of record albums beginning in 1963. As a comedian, Cosby told stories rather than jokes. His breakout routine was an imagined conversation between God and a skeptical Noah, but Cosby found his richest vein of humor in his Philadelphia childhood, particularly in tales about his friends Fat Albert, Cosby’s brother Russell, and Old Weird Harold.
TV producer Sheldon Leonard landed Cosby a break-out television role in I Spy, the first time an African-American actor starred in a weekly dramatic television series. Cosby won two Emmy Awards for his portrayal of an undercover CIA agent.
Cosby then appeared in a series of shows named after himself: The Bill Cosby Show, The New Bill Cosby Show, the animated Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Cos, The Cosby Show, The Cosby Mysteries, and Cosby. He has producer, writer, director and even composer credits on many of his projects.
Cosby was a regular on the Captain Kangaroo show in the 1980s, presenting the «Picture Pages» segment which was later syndicated on its own.
He won several Grammy awards for comedy albums, had a top forty song in 1969, and sang on a number of albums. He won more Grammies for comedy than any other artist, winning every year from 1965 to 1970 and again in 1987. As of 2005, he had 3 gold — and 6 platinum-certified comedy albums. He has also written several humorous books about different aspects of life, based on his stand-up comedy such as Fatherhood and Love and Marriage. In fact, Fatherhood and Time Flies were the best selling non-fiction hardback books of 1986 and 1987, respectively.
Cosby has also made occasional forays into film acting, but the critical and popular success which came so abundantly to his stage and television work has not blessed his movie performances: His natural charisma has often been undermined by mediocre scripts in films like The Devil and Max Devlin and Ghost Dad, and the notorious flop Leonard Part 6 , although his work in ensemble casts in Uptown Saturday Night and Let’s Do it Again, a pair of productions headed up by Sidney Poitier in the mid-1970s, received favorable reviews.
One of Cosby’s more colorful performances was his portrayal as a bigot in Bill Cosby on Prejudice.
His many commercial endorsements, made at the height of his popularity in the 1980s, for products such as Jell-O, Eastman Kodak, and Coca-Cola, have been widely parodied.
Cosby earned a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts in 1977: his thesis concerned the use of the Fat Albert series as a teaching aid. He has attempted to integrate education with television in some projects, such as Picture Pages, where Cosby taught children how to draw in a series of shorts aired by PBS. Notably, he structured the 80’s Cosby family to represent children at all ages, and the addition of daughter Sondra as a Princeton-educated lawyer is meant to send the message that good parenting and education of children leads to success. The Cosby Show also addressed social issues, such as drugs, illiteracy, teen pregnancy, and gang violence.
Cosby is now a leading educational philanthropist.
He hosted the television program Kids Say the Darndest Things, which aired from 1996 through 2002.
He is married to Camille Hanks and they have four daughters. Their only son Ennis Cosby, aged 27, was murdered on January 16, 1997, while changing a flat tire in Los Angeles, California. On March 12, 1997, his assailant, Mikail Markhasev, was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with attempted robbery and murder. He was convicted on July 7, 1998 and is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
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