LisaGay Hamilton has appeared in movies, television shows, and plays. On the ABC legal drama The Practice, she is best known for playing attorney Rebecca Washington (1997–2003). She also played Suzanne Simms on the Hulu series Chance (2016), Melissa Thoreau on the TNT comedy-drama Men of a Certain Age (2009–2011), Celia Jones on the Netflix series House of Cards (2016), and Kayla Price on the Hulu series The First (2018).
In addition to 12 Monkeys (1995), Jackie Brown (1997), Beloved (1998), True Crime (1999), The Sum of All Fears (2002), The Soloist (2009), Beastly (2011), Beautiful Boy (2018), and Vice, Hamilton has been in a number more movies (2018). Her theatrical performances as Isabella in Measure for Measure, Lady Hotspur in Henry IV Parts I and II, Athol Fugard’s Valley Song, and The Ohio State Murders are among her credits. Hamilton also appeared in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson and Gem of the Ocean on Broadway as a member of the original cast. She produced and directed the 2003 documentary film Beah: A Black Woman Speaks, which earned her a Peabody Award in 2005.
Net Worth $4 million
Occupation Actress
Age 58 years
Height 1.65m
LisaGay Hamilton, now 58 years old, was born in Los Angeles, California, in the United States on March 25, 1964. She is the child of American citizens Eleanor Albertine Blackwell and Ira Winslow Hamilton, Jr. She was raised mostly in Stony Brook, Long Island, New York. Her mother, Eleanor Albertine “Tina” Blackwell, was from Meridian, Mississippi, and her father, Ira Winslow Hamilton, Jr., was from Bessemer, Alabama.
Tina attended Talladega while Ira attended Morehouse, and both of Hamilton’s parents earned degrees from historically black universities and went on to have successful careers. Ira first worked as an engineer before starting his own general construction company. Tina subsequently obtained a master’s degree in social work and spent several years working with the Girl Scouts.
She developed a passion for theater from a young age. She saw a number of off-Broadway performances by the Negro Ensemble Company in the 1970s, such as A Soldier’s Story and The First Breeze of Summer. She enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University to study theater, but a year later she was admitted to the Tisch Drama School at New York University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drama in 1985. She continued her graduate education at The Juilliard School, where in 1989 she received an M.A. in theater.
Lisa Gay Hamilton had classical theater in mind. She appeared in Measure for Measure at the New York Shakespeare Festival alongside Kevin Kline in one of her first well-known parts. She gained a reputation as a serious dramatic performer thanks to her roles in Much Ado About Nothing, Tartuffe, Reckless, Family of Mann, and Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Hamilton received an Obie Award, a Clarence Derwent Award, an Ovation award for outstanding actress, and a Drama Desk nomination for her 1995–1996 performance as a young, aspiring South African singer in Athol Fugard’s Valley Song. Recently, LisaGay Hamilton received praise for her performance as Suzanne Alexander in Adrienne Kennedy’s The Ohio State Murders. She also received her second Obie and a nomination for a Lucille Lortel Award.
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She made appearances in over two dozen movies, such as Jonathan Demme’s The Truth About Charlie and Beloved, Clint Eastwood’s True Crime, Palookaville, Drunks, Showtime’s A House Divided, and Campbell Scott’s cinematic adaptation of Hamlet, in which she played Ophelia. She has collaborated with filmmaker Rodrigo Garca on a number of projects, including the movies Ten Tiny Love Stories, Nine Lives, and Mother and Child. Both The Soloist and Honeydripper were directed by Joe Wright.
Beah: A Black Woman Speaks, a 2003 documentary film that was produced and directed by LisaGay Hamilton, received a Peabody Award in 2005. The movie depicts the tale of Beah Richards, a groundbreaking black actress who paved the way for African-American actresses. On the Beloved set, the two ladies had become friends (1998). Hamilton recorded their chats for more than 70 hours over the course of the next two years.
Both Richards’ political involvement and her poetry were covered in Hamilton’s film. At the AFI Film Festival, the movie took home the Grand Jury Prize. After Richards passed away in 2000, Hamilton worked with the children’s book artist R. Gregory Christie to adapt one of her poems. Simon & Schuster released Keep Climbing Girls in 2006.
She portrayed Melissa in the hour-long comedy-drama television series Men of a Certain Age, which aired from 2009 to 2011. Ray Romano, Andre Braugher, and Scott Bakula starred in it. LisaGay Hamilton joined the faculty at the California Institute of the Arts’ School of Theater in the autumn of 2010.
The marriage of LisaGay Hamilton and Robin Kelley took place in 2009. Her spouse, Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA, is a historian and scholar. The spouse has a daughter from a previous marriage to artist Diedra Harris-Kelley, but the pair has never had children together. LisaGay Hamilton has a decent body weight that fits her personality and a pleasing height of 1.65 meters. LisaGay Hamilton and her husband Robin Kelly are still together as of the middle of 2022.
What is LisaGay Hamilton’s estimated worth? The estimated net worth of LisaGay Hamilton is $4 million. Her acting job is her primary source of income. Together with her other work earnings, LisaGay Hamilton makes over $1 million a year in pay. She is one of the most wealthy and well-known actresses in the country. Her lucrative job has allowed her to enjoy opulent living and expensive travel.