Diahann Carroll, a multiple award-winning African American actor and singer who broke racial barriers with her roles, has died in Los Angeles of cancer. She was 84.
Her daughter, Susan Kay, and her manager, Brian Panella, confirmed the death on Friday.
“She had been fighting it for quite some time, and did not want the world to know,” Panella told journalists.
Carroll’s best-known role was in the sitcom Julia. In the show, which ran from 1968 to 1971, she played the title character, Julia Baker, a nurse whose husband had been killed in the Vietnam War.
For much of the 20th century, African Americans in the US visual entertainment industry were long confined to either minor roles or roles in which they played domestic help. While Carroll was not the first black women to star in her own show, with Julia she became the first to star as someone other than a servant.
Carroll was married four times( four different men),firstly was to a talent manager and music producer, Monte Kay, secondly was retailer Fred Glusman, while the third was editor Robert DeLeon and lastly was singer Vic Damone.
She has a daughter, Suzanne Kay in her first marriage, who happens to be a journalist and screenwriter.
Also, she left behind two grandchildren August and Sydne.
