Karyn Parsons

Parsons was born in Los Angeles, California. In an interview for Essence in 2008, she described her parentage as biracial.[1] Her mother, Louise Parsons, is African-American from Charleston, South Carolina and her father, Kenneth B. Parsons, is British American of English and Welsh descent and from Butte, Montana. She attended Santa Monica High School.[2]

Parsons starred as Hilary Banks on the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which aired on NBC from 1990 to 1996. She co-created, co-produced, co-wrote, and co-starred on the Fox sitcom Lush Life in 1996, which was later canceled after four episodes. In 2001, she starred in the critically acclaimed but short-lived television series The Job with Denis Leary. Besides television, Parsons has starred in several films, particularly in comedies such as Late Nights (1992), Major Payne (1995), and The Ladies Man (2000). Parsons is the creator of Sweet Blackberry, a line of animated films about unsung black heroes. The first in the series is about Henry "Box" Brown, a slave who mailed himself to freedom.[3]

Parsons has also published two books for children: a middle-grade novel, How High the Moon (2019), which was loosely inspired by stories of her mother's childhood in the Jim Crow South;[4] and Flying Free (2020), a picture-book biography of Bessie Coleman illustrated by R. Gregory Christie.

Parsons married The Young and the Restless actor Randy Brooks in 1987; they divorced in 1990. Parsons married director Alexandre Rockwell in 2003.[5] Together they have a daughter, Lana (2003), and a son, Nico (2007).[6]

• How High the Moon (2019)
• Flying Free (2020)

• Karyn Parsons at IMDb