Broadway BUZZ

Vanessa Bell Calloway has earned eight NAACP Image Award nominations. She won the NAACP Theater Award for Best Actress for her role as Zora Neale Hurston in her one-woman critically-acclaimed play Letters From Zora. Vanessa stars in the NAACP Image Award nominated limited series “The Black Hamptons” now streaming on BET PLUS, Whicked City a new series for ALLBLK and she’ll soon be seen in the new Netflix’s series The Vince Staples Show, produced by Kenya Barris and a Netflix’s pilot Little Sky created and directed by Rightor Doyle. Black Girl Erupted, a TV movie that she directed, produced and co-starred in for BETHER will air this July. She was a special guest star in the final season of NBC’s hit drama This Is Us, as well as BET Plus Drama Sacrifice and The Games People Play. She starred as the matriarch Lady Ella for six seasons on Bounce TV!s one-hour hit-drama "Saint & Sinners”, which can now be viewed on Hulu. Movie credits include Lionsgate’s feature film The Devil You Know, A Holiday Chance, American Skin, Coming To America, Coming 2 America, Harriet, South Side With You,  What!s Love Got to Do With, Biker Boyz, Daylight, Crimson Tide, Love Don’t Cost A Thing, Cheaper By The Dozen and The Inkwell. Her other TV credits are many! Other shows include Grand Crew, Shameless, Black Monday, Kenan, Queen Sugar, Unbelievable, Love Is, Survivors Remorse, Grey’s Anatomy, Real Husbands Of Hollywood, Hawthorne RN, The Closer, NCIS, Castle, and The Temptations…just to name a few. An original cast member of the Broadway hit Dreamgirls, Vanessa has also starred in Seven Guitars at Kenny Leon’s August Wilson 20th Century Theater Festival held at The Kennedy Center. The Los Angeles productions of The Piano Lesson, The Divorce, and Crowns. A professional concert dancer for many years, Vanessa can be seen dancing a trio with her two beautiful grown daughters Ashley and Alexandra in a viral video on YouTube to the song “If I Could” by Regina Belle. Vanessa has directed episodes of Saints And Sinners, Some Day At Christmas, a Christmas movie for TV One and a movie short for BET HER’s health initiative “A Long Look In The Mirror”. She has two hit web series that she created and produced, "In The Company of Friends”, and "Cookin! & Hookin! Up” as well as her Blog Talk Radio Show, "That’s So Very Vanessa”. All are on demand anytime at www.inthecompanyoffriends.tv. A member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc, Vanessa has been married to her anesthesiologist husband Dr. Tony Calloway for 34 years and they live in Los Angeles California.