Lynda Gravátt

Biography

Lynda Gravátt, three-time Audelco Award winner (2003, 2004 and 2007), Audelco Pioneer Award winner (2022) and winner of the Helen Hayes Award (2004), was born in Harlem in 1946. For many years her adoring adoptive parents, Fontaine and David Bradley, sent her to a variety of dancing schools where she studied Interpretive and African dance, and Russian ballet. As early as four years of age, she performed on Broadway in The King and I! This led to local weekly television appearances on Joe Michael’s Kids. Later, at nine years of age, she also appeared in Carnegie Hall recitals. Dance and drama clubs followed in high school as well as a summer scholarship at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Connecticut.

As an adult, Gravátt honed her craft in Washington, DC as a founding member of Robert Alexander’s first company of Living Stage/Arena Stage (1969). As a student at Howard University (BFA, 1971), she appeared in numerous productions, while also venturing out to perform with the ground-breaking DC Black Repertory (founded by Robert Hooks and Vantile Whitfield).

Film and television credits include Delivery Man, Bounty Hunter, I Hate Valentine’s Day, Unanswered Questions, “Person of Interest,” “30 Rock,” “Elementary,” “The Good Wife,” “Sex and the City,” “Hoop Life,” and all of the “Law & Orders.”; She is the recipient of a Theatre World Award and three Audelco Awards. Ms. Gravátt is a proud graduate of Howard University.