Нишель Николс: Жизнь и карьера актрисы

American actress (1932–2022)

Nichelle Nichols (/n//ɪ//'//ʃ//ɛ//l/ nishEL; born Grace Dell Nichols; December 28, 1932 – July 30, 2022) was an American actress, singer and dancer whose portrayal of Uhura in Star Trek and its film sequels was groundbreaking for African American actresses on American television. Born in the Chicago suburb of Robbins, she trained in dance, and began her career as a dancer, singer and model in Chicago. As an actor, she appeared on stage, in television and in film.

Grace Dell Nichols was born the third of six children on December 28, 1932, in Robbins, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, to Samuel Earl Nichols, a factory worker who was elected both town mayor of Robbins in 1929 and its chief magistrate, and his wife, Lishia (Parks) Nichols, a homemaker. Disliking her name, Nichols asked her parents for a new one; they suggested Nichelle, which they said meant "victorious maiden" (from Nike and the suffix elle). The family later moved into an apartment in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago, where Nichols attended Englewood High School, graduating in 1951. From age 12, she studied dance at the Chicago Ballet Academy. Her acting break was an appearance in Kicks and Co., Oscar Brown's highly touted but ill fated 1961 musical. In the thinly veiled satire of Playboy magazine, she played Hazel Sharpe, a voluptuous campus queen who was tempted by the devil and Orgy Magazine to become "Orgy Maiden of the Month". Although the play closed after a short run in Chicago, Nichols attracted the attention of Hugh Hefner, the publisher of Playboy, who booked her as a singer for his Chicago Playboy Club. She also appeared as Carmen for a Chicago stock company production of Carmen Jones and performed in a New York production of Porgy and Bess. Between acting and singing engagements, she did occasional modeling. In January 1967, Nichols was also featured on the cover of Ebony magazine, and had two feature articles in it in five years. She continued touring the US, Canada, and Europe as a singer with Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton. On the West Coast, she appeared in The Roar of the Greasepaint and For My People, and garnered high praise for her performance in the James Baldwin play Blues for Mister Charlie. Prior to being cast as Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek, Nichols was a guest actress on television producer Gene Roddenberry's first series The Lieutenant (1964) in the episode "To Set It Right", which dealt with racial prejudice.

On Star Trek, Nichols was one of the first Black women featured in a major television series. Her prominent supporting role as a bridge officer was unprecedented. She was once tempted to leave the series; however, a conversation with Martin Luther King Jr. changed her mind. Towards the end of the first season, Nichols was offered a role on Broadway. Preferring the stage to the television studio, she decided to take the role. Nichols went to Roddenberry's office, told him that she planned to leave, and handed him her resignation letter. Unable to convince her to stay, Roddenberry told her to take the weekend off, and if she still felt she should leave, he would give her his blessing. That weekend, Nichols attended a banquet organized by the NAACP, where she was informed that a fan wanted to meet her. text=I thought it was a Trekkie, and so I said, 'Sure.' I looked across the room and whoever the fan was had to wait because there was Dr. Martin Luther King walking towards me with this big grin on his face. He reached out to me and said, 'Yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan.' He said that Star Trek was the only show that he, and his wife Coretta, would allow their three little children to stay up and watch. [She told King about her plans to leave the series because she wanted to take a role that was tied to Broadway.] I never got to tell him why, because he said, 'You cannot, you cannot For the first time on television, we will be seen as we should be seen every day—as intelligent, quality, beautiful people who can sing, dance, and go to space who are professors, lawyers If you leave, that door can be closed, because your role is not a black role, and is not a female role; he can fill it with anybody, even an alien." Calling Nichols a "vital role model", King compared her work on the series to the marches of the ongoing civil rights movement. The next day, she returned to Roddenberry's office to tell him she would stay. When she told Roddenberry what King had said, tears came to his eyes. Former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison cited Nichols' role of Lieutenant Uhura as her inspiration for becoming an astronaut. Whoopi Goldberg has also spoken of Nichols' influence, saying she asked for a role on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and her character Guinan was specially created, while Jemison appeared on an episode of the series. In her role as Lieutenant Uhura, Nichols kissed white actor William Shatner (as Captain James T. Kirk) in the November 22, 1968 Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren". It has been cited as the first example of an interracial kiss on U. S. television, although several earlier instances have been identified. The Shatner/Nichols kiss was considered groundbreaking, even though it was portrayed as having been forced by alien telepathy. There was some praise and almost no dissent. In her autobiography Beyond Uhura, Star Trek and Other Memories, Nichols cited a letter from a white Southerner who wrote, "I am totally opposed to the mixing of the races. However, any time a red blooded American boy like Captain Kirk gets a beautiful dame in his arms that looks like Uhura, he ain't gonna fight it." During the Comedy Central Roast of Shatner on August 20, 2006, Nichols jokingly referred to the kiss and said, "What do you say, let's make a little more TV history and kiss my black ass!" Despite the series' cancellation in 1969, Star Trek continued to play a part in Nichols' life. She provided the voice of Uhura in Star Trek: The Animated Series; in one episode, "The Lorelei Signal", Uhura assumes command of the Enterprise. Nichols noted in her autobiography her frustration that this never happened on the original series. She co starred in six Star Trek films, culminating in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. In 1994, Nichols published her autobiography, Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories. In it, she claimed that the role of Peggy Fair in the television series Mannix was offered to her during the final season of Star Trek, but producer Gene Roddenberry refused to release her from her contract. Between the end of the original series and the Star Trek animated series and feature films, Nichols appeared in small television and film roles. She briefly appeared as a secretary in Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding! (1967),

Nichols appeared in animated form as one of Al Gore's Vice Presidential Action Rangers in the "Anthology of Interest I" episode of Futurama, and she provided the voice of her own head in a glass jar in the episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before". She voiced the recurring role of Elisa Maza's mother Diane Maza in the animated series Gargoyles, and played Thoth Kopeira in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series. In 2004, she provided the voice for herself in The Simpsons episode "Simple Simpson". In the comedy film Snow Dogs (2002), she appeared as the mother of the male lead, played by Cuba Gooding Jr. She also served as executive producer and choreographer, and sang three songs in the film, two of which she composed. She was twice nominated for the Chicago theatrical Sarah Siddons Award for Best Actress, first for her portrayal of Hazel Sharpe in Kicks and Co., and again for her performance in The Blacks. On August 30, 2016, she was introduced as the aging mother of Neil Winters on the long running soap opera The Young and the Restless. She received her first Daytime Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Guest Performer in a Drama Series" for the role on March 22, 2017.

Nichols released two music albums: Down to Earth, a collection of standards released in 1967, during the original run of Star Trek; and Out of This World, released in 1991, a more rock oriented album themed around Star Trek and space exploration. As Uhura, Nichols sang on the Star Trek episodes "Charlie X" and "The Conscience of the King".

After the cancellation of Star Trek, Nichols volunteered her time in a special project with NASA to recruit minority and female personnel for the space agency. The program was a success. Among those recruited were Dr. Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, and United States Air Force Colonel Guion Bluford, the first African American astronaut, as well as Dr. Judith Resnik and Dr. Ronald McNair, who both flew successful missions during the Space Shuttle program before their deaths in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986. Recruits also included Charles Bolden, the former NASA administrator and veteran of four shuttle missions, Frederick D. Gregory, former deputy administrator and a veteran of three shuttle missions and Lori Garver, former deputy administrator. An enthusiastic advocate of space exploration, Nichols served from the mid 1980s on the board of governors of the National Space Institute (today's National Space Society), a nonprofit, educational space advocacy organization. Nichols' work with NASA is given significant focus in the documentary Woman in Motion about her life.

In her autobiography, Nichols wrote that she was romantically involved with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry for a few years in the 1960s. She said the affair ended well before Star Trek began, when she realized Roddenberry was also involved with her acquaintance Majel Hudec (known as Majel Barrett). Hudec went on to marry Gene Roddenberry and have a regular supporting role as nurse Christine Chapel on Star Trek. When Roddenberry's health was fading, Nichols co wrote a song for him, "Gene", which she sang at his memorial service. Nichols married twice—first to dancer Foster Johnson (1917–1981), whom she married in 1951 and divorced the same year. They had one child together, Kyle Johnson, who was born August 14, 1951. She married Duke Mondy, in 1968; they divorced in 1972. Nichols' younger brother, Thomas, was a member of the Heaven's Gate cult. He died on March 26, 1997, in the cult's mass suicide that purposefully coincided with the passing of Comet Hale–Bopp. A member for 20 years, he frequently identified himself as Nichelle's brother in promotional materials released by the cult. On February 29, 2012, Nichols met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. She later tweeted, " [President] Obama was quoted as saying that he'd had a crush on me when he was younger I asked about that, and he proudly confirmed it! President Obama also confirmed for me that he was definitely a Trekker! How wonderful is that?!" Nichols was a lifelong Democrat and a practicing Presbyterian.

In June 2015, Nichols suffered a mild stroke at her Los Angeles home and was admitted to a Los Angeles area hospital. A magnetic resonance imaging scan confirmed a small stroke had occurred, and she began inpatient therapy. In early 2018, she was diagnosed with dementia, and subsequently announced her retirement from convention appearances. Following a legal dispute over the actions of her manager turned caretaker Gilbert Bell, her son Kyle Johnson filed for conservatorship in 2018. Before a court granted his petition in January 2019, Nichols' friend Angelique Fawcette, who had already expressed concern in 2017 over Bell's control of access to her, pressed for visitation rights, including by opposing Johnson's petition. That dispute, and a 2019 court case by Bell over being evicted from the guesthouse on Nichols' property, were both ongoing as of August 2021. Nichols died of heart failure in Silver City, New Mexico, on July 30, 2022, at the age of 89. Her ashes are due to be sent into space alongside Majel Barrett's and Douglas Trumbull's.

In 1982, Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his novel Friday to her. Asteroid 68410 Nichols is named in her honor. In 1992, she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for her contribution to television. In 1999, Nichols was awarded a Goldene Kamera for Kultstar des Jahrhunderts (Cult Star of the Century). 2010, Nichols received an honorary degree from Los Angeles Mission College. Nichols received The Life Career Award, from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, in 2016, the first woman to receive it. Nichols was an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Udea nicholsae, a species of snout moths, was named in her honour. The second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds began with a pre credits dedication, referencing one of her recurring lines from the original series: "For Nichelle who was first through the door and showed us the stars. Hailing frequencies forever open "

YearTitleRoleNotes1964The LieutenantNorma BartlettEpisode: "To Set It Right"1966Peyton PlaceNurse2 episodes Tarzan Ruana2 episodes1966–1969Star TrekNyota UhuraMain role1970InsightEllieEpisode: "Old King Cole"1973–1974Star Trek: The Animated SeriesNyota UhuraAdditional voicesMain role1984Antony and CleopatraCharmian1997Spider ManMiriam (voice)2 episodes2000–2002Futurama Herself (voice)Fan production2009The CabonautsCJEpisode: "Pilot"2010Scooby Doo! Curse of the Lake MonsterSenatorTV film2016The Young and the RestlessLucinda Winters4 episodes 2017Star Trek: RenegadesAdmiral Grace JemisonEpisode: "The Requiem"; fan productionDownward DogDeejay DeVineEpisode: "Old"Sharknado 5: Global SwarmingSec. General StarrEpisode: "Kobayashi"; archive audio