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Lonette Mckee Biography
Lonette Mckee is an American film, television and theater actress, music composer, producer, songwriter, screenwriter, and director. She is best known for her role as Sister Williams in the original 1976 musical-drama film Sparkle. She also had notable roles in such movies as; The Cotton Club, Jungle Fever, ATL, Honey. Mckee also appeared on the CW sitcom The Game as Mrs. Pitts, the mother of Jason (played by Coby Bell) in 2007.
Lonette Mckee Age
Mckee was born on Jully 22, 1954, in Detroit, Michigan, U.S. She is 65 years old as of 2018.
Lonette Mckee Family | Sibling
Mckee was the second of three daughters of Dorothy Mckee, of Swedish descent, and Lonnie Mckee, an African bricklayer and auto manufacturer employee.
Lonette Mckee Marriage | Children
She was married to youth counselor Leo Compton from 1983 to 1990. In the mid-90s, she was living in an upper East Side brownstone with her companion, musician Bryant McNeil. The two had met while they were working together on Mckee’s Natural Love album. She teaches a master acting workshop at Centenary College of New Jersey, where she served as an adjunct professor in the Theater Arts department.
Lonette Mckee Education
She studied film directing at The New School in New York and apprenticed directing with filmmaker Spike Lee. Mckee also studied singing with Dini Clark and ballet with Sarah Tayir, both in Los Angeles.
Lonette Mckee Career
She began in the music business in Detroit as a child prodigy, where she started writing music/lyrics, singing, playing keyboards and performing at the age of seven. In 1968, Mckee, then aged 14 recorded her first record entitled ”Don’t Worry About It”, which became an instant regional pop/R and B hit. She wrote the title song for the film Quadroon when she was fifteen in which her sister Katherine Mckee starred.
Several years later, She has launched to stardom with her critically acclaimed performance in the hit 1976 musical drama film Sparkle. She has written and produced three solo LPs. Natural Love was produced for Spike Lee’s Columbia ”40 Acres and A Mule” label in 1992.
Ed Hogan, receiving for AllMusic, wrote: ”Natural Love’ shows that the singer/songwriter’s muse knows no stylistic bounds. As with her earlier effort, She co-writes all of the songs while sharing production credits with Bryant McNeil, Gene Lake Jr., and labelmate Raymond Jones of State of Art.”
Mckee scored the music for the well-received cable documentary on the Lower Manhattan African Burial Ground, as numerous infomercials. Mckee has toured extensively throughout the world singing concert performances, including the JVC Jazz Festival at Carnegie Hall.
McKee won critical acclaim for her Broadway debut performance in the musical The First in 1981, co-starring in the role of Jackie Robinson’s wife Rachel. She became the first African American to play the coveted role of Julie in the Houston Grand Opera’s production of Show Boat in 1983 on Broadway, for which she received a Tony Award nomination for Actress in a Musical.
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McKee’s tragic portrayal of jazz legend Billie Holiday in the one-woman drama with music, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill won critical acclaim, standing ovations and a 1987 Drama Desk Award nomination (Outstanding Actress in a Musical).
She reprised the role of ‘Julie’ on Broadway in the 1994 revival of the musical Show Boat directed by Hal Prince. McKee is currently developing plans to establish a performance arts center in the New York tri-state area. McKee performs her one-woman memoir with music on stages throughout the country. She is producing her first feature film Dream Street, which she wrote and will direct.
Lonette Mckee jungle fever
Jungle Fever is a 1991 American romantic comedy-drama film written, produced and directed by Spike Lee. The film stars Wesley Snipes, Annabella Sciorra, Lee, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Samuel L. Jackson, Lonette McKee, John Turturro, Frank Vincent, Halle Berry, and Anthony Quinn, and is Lee’s fifth feature-length film.
Jungle Fever explores the beginning and end of an extramarital interracial relationship against the urban backdrop of the streets of New York City in the 1990s. The film received positive reviews, with particular praise for Samuel L. Jackson’s performance.
Flipper Purify (Wesley Snipes), a successful and happily married architect from Harlem, is married to Drew (Lonette McKee), who works as a buyer at Bloomingdales. Together, they have a young daughter, Ming (Veronica Timbers). At work, Flipper discovers that an Italian-American woman named Angie Tucci (Annabella Sciorra) has been hired as a temp and his secretary.
Angie lives in Bensonhurst with her abusive and racist father, Mike (Frank Vincent), and her two brothers, Charlie (David Dundara) and Jimmy (Michael Imperioli). Angie and her boyfriend Paulie Carbone (John Turturro) have been dating since high school. Paulie runs a corner store and lives with his elderly widowed father, Lou (Anthony Quinn). Angie feels suffocated in her home life; every night when she returns home from work she is expected to cook for her father and two brothers.
Flipper and Angie begin to spend many nights in the office working late, and one night they have sex. The sexual encounter begins their tumultuous relationship. Afterward, Flipper demands to be promoted to partner at the company but gets rejected by his superiors (Tim Robbins and Brad Dourif), to which he responds by resigning and having plans to start his own firm.
Eventually, Flipper admits his infidelity to his longtime friend, high school teacher Cyrus (Spike Lee). Cyrus criticizes Flipper for having an affair with a white woman, referring to the cause as “jungle fever” – an attraction borne of sexualized racial myths rather than love. Flipper pleads with Cyrus not to tell anyone, including his wife. Angie’s friends are shocked when Angie tells them she is having a relationship with a black man.
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