Vanessa Bell Calloway

Vanessa Bell Calloway, born as Vanessa Bell on March 20, 1957, is a renowned American actress. She initiated her career as a dancer and gained recognition for her film roles as Princess Imani Izzi in the 1988 comedy Coming to America and its sequel. Over the years, Bell Calloway has appeared in over 150 film and television productions and is a nine-time NAACP Image Awards nominee. Her film credits include Death Spa (1988), What's Love Got to Do with It (1993), The Inkwell (1994), Crimson Tide (1995), Daylight (1996), The Brothers (2001) and Biker Boyz (2003). She also demonstrated impressive performances in several television series, including the first African American prime-time soap opera, Under One Roof (1995), Hawthorne, Shameless, and This Is Us.

Bell Calloway was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and attained a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ohio University. She began her career as a dancer in Michael Bennett's original Broadway production of Dreamgirls. She explored her passion for acting further in the ABC daytime soap opera, All My Children in 1985. From 2016 to 2022, she took the lead role as Lady Ella Johnson in the Bounce TV prime-time soap opera, Saints & Sinners, and in 2022 began starring in the BET+ crime drama, The Black Hamptons. In her personal life, she overcame a significant battle with ductal carcinoma, an early stage of breast cancer in 2009. By October 2015, she had been cancer-free for six years and shared her journey in an Ebony magazine essay.