Chandra Wilson to speak at AMDA LA's Spring 2012 Graduation
May 30, 2012 - Announcements
AMDA Los Angeles is pleased to announce the esteemed Chandra Wilson as our Spring 2012 Graduation Speaker. Chandra Wilson is best known for her multi award winning role as Dr. Miranda Bailey on ABC’s hit drama "Grey’s Anatomy". For her work as an actor and director on the series, she has received the Screen Actors Guild Award, People’s Choice Award, four NAACP Image Awards and four Emmy Award nominations.
The Houston native began performing at age five at Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS) and later, at Houston’s premier African American theatre, the Ensemble Theatre. She graduated from Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, acquired her BFA in Drama from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and spent four years training at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. Her New York career began playing Bonna Willis in The Good Times are Killing Me, winning a Theatre World Award for Outstanding Debut Performance. Broadway credits include: Matron Mama Morton in Chicago, Dotty Moffett in Caroline, or Change, Gary Coleman in Avenue Q and Flossie’s Friend in the Broadway revival of On the Town. Other stage credits include The Miracle Worker at Charlotte Repertory Theatre, Paper Moon: The Musical at The Papermill Playhouse, The Family of Mann by Theresa Rebeck at the Second Stage Theatre, Believing for the Young Playwright’s Festival at Playwrights Horizons and Little Shop of Horrors at the Falmouth Playhouse. Chandra gave a Prism Award winning and Emmy nominated performance in Hallmark Channel’s Accidental Friendship. She can also be seen in the films Frankie and Alice, Lone Star and Philadelphia. She was a regular on ABC series "Bob Patterson", and played guest-starring roles on "The Sopranos", "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit", "Sex and the City", "Third Watch", "100 Centre Street", "Cosby", "Law & Order" and "The Cosby Show".
Chandra’s philanthropic work includes being national spokesperson for the Downy Touch of Comfort program (which distributes hand made quilts from Quilts for Kids to children staying in hospitals across the country), and the Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome Association (CVSA) which brings awareness of CVS and Mitochondrial Diseases as functional disorders. She annually funds the Sermoonjoy Scholarship which provides four year college scholarships to 2 Theatre Department graduates from Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and 2 graduating seniors with a financial need from NYU Tisch School of the Arts Undergraduate Drama Department. She also funds the Sermoonjoy Fellowship which provides 2 annual fellowships to mid-career actors looking to receive training in a specific area of technique. More info about these programs.