Sherri Saum

Biography

Sherri M. Saum is an American actress. Saum is best known for her co-lead role as Lena Adams Foster in the Freeform drama series The Fosters as well as a subsequent guest star role in its spinoff Good Trouble.

Saum was born in Dayton, Ohio, to a German mother and an African-American father. She got her start at a Model Search America convention near her home in Kettering, Ohio. She was discovered during high school, modeling mostly during summer breaks until she moved to New York to work full-time with the NY modeling agency Images Management. Saum attended Ohio State University in Columbus, and New York University in New York.

Saum began her acting career in the NBC daytime soap opera, Sunset Beach as Vanessa Hart, during the entire run of the series, from 1997 to 1999. In 1999 she received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series for her role in the show.

In 2012, Saum was cast along with Teri Polo in the lead roles of the Jennifer Lopez-produced drama series The Fosters for ABC Family. The series premiered on June 3, 2013. The series ended in 2018 after five seasons. She reprised her role in its spinoff, Good Trouble in 2019. In 2014, she guest starred in the NBC legal drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and in 2015 in the ABC series, How to Get Away with Murder.

On May 26, 2007, Saum married longtime boyfriend and former One Life to Live castmate Kamar de los Reyes in New York City.