At age 16, Lisa Bonet became Denise Huxtable on The Cosby Show, then later headed to college in the hit family sitcom’s young-adult-focused spinoff, A Different World.
She was famously fired from both shows—the latter when she became pregnant in real life, and the former after butting heads with star and co-creator, Bill Cosby. Bonet’s time in the public eye didn’t end after that, however. Already married to a famous rock star, Lenny Kravitz, she continued acting and would go on to see her divorce and remarriage make headlines, as well as one of her children become a star in her own right. Keep reading to see where Bonet is now, at age 54.
Bonet left The Cosby Show midway through its run to star in the spinoff A Different World, about Denise’s experience attending a historically Black college. But after she announced she was expecting a baby (daughter Zoë Kravitz was born in 1988) in the summer between the first and second seasons, she was cut from the show because producers decided they didn’t want the plot to focus on a pregnant college student.
Bonet returned to the cast of The Cosby Show but was let go in 1991 for what was said, at the time, to be “creative differences.” However, in his 2020 memoir Let Love Rule, as reported by The List, her former husband Lenny Kravitz placed the blame instead on the actor’s “tense” and “untenable” relationship with Cosby.
In 1993, Bonet legally changed her name to Lilakoi Moon to protect her privacy, per the Orlando Sentinel, although years later she described it as a decision “to honor [her] personal life” outside of acting. She also moved to a ranch in the mountains of southern California, where she has lived a largely private life for decades with her family and a host of animals, including wolf-dog hybrids and a donkey.
“I’m a shy person. I don’t know if it’s in my DNA to share with the world,” she told People in 2008. After leaving The Cosby Show for good, Bonet continued acting, but struggled to find strong roles for a time, appearing in a handful of made-for-TV movies in the mid-’90s. In 1998, she appeared in a supporting role as Will Smith’s girlfriend in the conspiracy thriller Enemy of the State, but it was her turn as one of John Cusack’s character’s ex-girlfriends in the 2000 cult romantic comedy High Fidelity that would become one of her most iconic roles—and result in an odd bit of Hollywood kismet when her daughter Zoë was cast as the lead in the TV series remake of the film two decades later.
