Lisa Bonet
On this date in 1967, Lisa Bonet was born. She is a Black Jewish actress and model.
Lisa Bonet was born in San Francisco to a Jewish mother and a Black father. Bonet's parents divorced when she was young, and her formative years were spent mainly in New York City and L.A. At age 11, she started auditioning for commercials, and after several years of ads and walk-on TV parts, she landed a role in "The Cosby Show." The show was an immediate hit, and Bonet quickly asserted herself as one of the most memorable kids in the Huxtable family, the outspoken teenager, Denise.
Bonet shared her character's defiant persona and left TV in 1987 for a racy part opposite Mickey Rourke in the Gothic thriller Angel Heart. The role required the 19-year-old Bonet to appear in several graphic sex scenes, some of which had to be cut for mainstream American release. The part did little to further her big-screen career, and by the end of the year, she would return to episodic TV in the series "A Different World." In 1987, Bonet married musician Lenny Kravitz, whose impulsive free spirit and bi-racial upbringing paralleled hers.
The Cosby-produced "World" was a hit, but Bonet lost interest, often showing up late to the set. Within two years, she was gone, spending more time with her newborn daughter, Zoe. Bonet spent the remainder of the 1980s making infrequent appearances on "The Cosby Show," she made a conscious decision not to act in the early 1990s. In 1993, her marriage to Kravitz fell apart, and to make ends meet in the mid-90s, she accepted roles in made-for-TV and straight-to-video productions.
Around this time, Bonet legally changed her name to Liliquois Moon and claimed she would continue to use her birth name for her acting career. She had another child with her boyfriend and former yoga instructor Brian Kest before returning to the film with a memorable supporting role in 1998's "Enemy of the State." Her Hollywood career appeared again on track when director Stephen Frears cast her as a sultry one-night-stand in "High Fidelity" (2000).
Despite her spotty film work, Bonet remains one of Hollywood's more intriguing young character actresses, enjoying longevity that few former child stars can claim. 2005, she began a relationship with actor Jason Momoa, and they married in 2007. On July 23, 2007, Bonet gave birth to her second child, Lola Iolani Momoa, her first with Momoa. On December 15, 2008, the couple had a son named Nakoa-Wolf Manakauapo Namakaeha Momoa.
