About Anna Deavere Smith
Anna Deavere Smith (born September 18, 1950) is an American actress, playwright, and professor. She is known for her roles as National Security Advisor Dr. Nancy McNally in The West Wing (2000–06), hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus in the Showtime series Nurse Jackie (2009–15), and U.S. District Court Clerk Tina Krissman on the ABC show For the People (2018–19). Smith is a recipient of The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2013). In 2015 she was selected as the Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2016, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Theatre Arts. She is the founding director of the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at New York University. == Early life == Smith was born in 1950 into an African-American family in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of Anna Rosalind (née Young), an elementary school principal, and Deaver Young Smith Jr., a coffee merchant. She has four younger siblings. She started attending school shortly after the city had started integrating the public schools, and attended both majority-black and majority-white schools during her elementary and middle school years.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.