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Nicole Ari Parker

Nicole Ari Parker

This young actress is best known for dazzling viewers each week in the outstanding role of Teri Joseph of Showtime's award winning original series Soul Food. She portrays a strong and powerful woman to her siblings and their families. The strength of her character is much like that of her person; although both are very professional, Parker is much more fun loving.

Nicole can now be seen on Second Time Around for UPN starring opposite fiancé Boris Kodjoe where they play a once married couple that after years of being apart, decide to remarry and give their relationship a second try.

Parker is as adept at portraying strong sexy women as she is at playing complicated diverse characters. Parker has displayed her acting range in several blockbuster and independent films. She has been featured in Touchstone Picture's Remember the Titans, Blue Streak with Martin Lawrence, Boogie Nights with Mark Wahlberg and the HBO Original Film, Dancing in September. She has also been featured in many independent films like 200 Cigarettes, Shooting Gallery's Loving Jezebel, Subway Stories, and Sebastian Cole, a winner at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival.

Parker has an extensive background in theatre, having performed in incredible Off-Broadway productions like Chicago, House of Lear, and Romeo and Juliet. She also appeared in the television movie The Wonderful World of Disney's: The Loretta Claiborne Story, Exiled, and Mind Prey.

Growing up, Parker always knew she wanted to be an actress. She began pursuing her dream at the Baltimore Actors Theatre and then it was on to Washington Ballet Company before moving to New York to study acting further at New York University. She is a graduate of NYU's famed Tisch School of the Arts. Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Parker currently resides in both New York and Los Angeles and during the season makes her home in Toronto, Canada.

Recently, her natural beauty has been embraced by Oil of Olay in their nationwide special advertising campaign that ran in Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, and Vogue.

In the Fall of 2002, Parker appeared in FOX Searchlight Picture's Brown Sugar. She plays the role of Reese, who is described by Husband Dre, played by Taye Diggs, as the quintessential woman. She is Brown Sugar. Smart, fine, sexy and classy, the role embraces the real woman Parker has become.

Parker has been nominated for six NAACP Image Awards and had the pleasure of presenting President Bill Clinton with a Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award at a ceremony hosted by the NAACP. She also received a special award at the Urban World Film Feestival, for Outstanding Body of Work as an Actress.

Parker is a participant of Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit organization that builds homes for single mothers across the country to Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Latin America to the Caribbean and Canada.

Nicole resides with fiancé Boris in Los Angeles


Note: This profile was written in or before 2005.
Read earlier biographies on this page.

Nicole Ari Parker Facts

OccupationActress
BirthdayOctober 7, 1970 (53)
SignLibra
BirthplaceBaltimore, Maryland, USA

Selected Filmography

Not available.