Lisa Bonet was born in 1967 in San Francisco, California. The actor is known for playing Denise, the second Huxtable kid, on “The Cosby Show” and “A Different World.” Denise Huxtable is fashionable and cool, but so is Lisa Bonet. In 2008, People described her as “strikingly beautiful — a self-proclaimed ‘hippie at heart,’ with a laid-back appeal and a warm, throaty voice.” Indeed, and Marcy Carsey — a producer of “The Cosby Show” — liked Bonet from the first time she met her. “I remember thinking, this is a kid who will not be anything else but herself,” Carsey said to The Washington Post back in 1987.
The actor made waves in the late 1980s and established herself as a serious performer with a private personal life. In addition to taking part in one of the most important Black TV families of all time, Bonet became the matriarch of her own famous family: She was married to musician Lenny Kravitz and is mom to actor Zoë Kravitz, who could seriously be mistaken for her sister.
Throughout her career, Bonet has stepped in and out of the limelight. But while this enigmatic actor isn’t always in the public eye, she’s given hints as to why. Let’s travel through the fascinating life and transformation of Lisa Bonet.
Lisa Bonet made her television debut on St. Elsewhere
Before she began acting, Lisa Bonet felt out of place in a wealthy, white community in Los Angeles, California. She recalled her childhood in a 1987 interview with The Washington Post: “The black kids would call me ‘Oreo,’ and I just didn’t feel totally at home and accepted with all these, you know, white rich people.” Bonet said she went through an “identity crisis” and continued, “I was an only kid, too, so I really had no one to identify with, and I used to like beg my mom every day to have a kid, another one, but my parents were divorced.”
Even if she wouldn’t have another sibling, Bonet needed something else in her life. A friend invited her to an acting class, which Bonet liked enough to return. She would soon land a guest spot on “St. Elsewhere” in 1983. The actor was 16 years old when the episode aired, the same age she was when she auditioned for “The Cosby Show.”
When Bonet made her first appearance on “Late Night with David Letterman” in April 1986, she acknowledged her “bit” part on “St. Elsewhere,” saying, “I wasn’t really into acting that much. It was just, I was going to school, and in Los Angeles, especially, when you’re, you know, a minority, there’s no work out there at all for you. So when the opportunity came up for this, I thought, ‘Wow, a series. Fun.'”
The show that made Lisa Bonet a star
Lisa Bonet played Denise Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” from 1984 to 1991, and she began to spend more time in the spotlight as the series racked up awards and gained popularity. Bonet and her TV siblings were featured on special programs like “Night of 100 Stars II,” a 1985 live entertainment marathon that benefitted The Actors’ Fund of America.
In 1992, at the end of “The Cosby Show’s” run, The New York Times reflected on the importance of the series: “When it first appeared, in 1984, television was barren of its traditional staple: great situation comedy. Viewers streamed to ‘Cosby’ because they could find laughs there every week.” The outlet also revealed that the fan-favorite sitcom snagged the top spot in Nielsen ratings from 1985 to 1989.
Therefore, a lot of people were watching Lisa Bonet as Denise Huxtable week after week. A few years into the series, she was ready to shoot a feature film and helm her own spin-off sitcom. But neither venture would be without its struggles, one way or another.
Letting Denise Huxtable and Lisa Bonet grow up
In 1986, Lisa Bonet was officially an adult at 18 years old, but she was still playing a big sister on a family show. Her next project during her years on “The Cosby Show” would be “Angel Heart,” an R-rated Alan Parker film also starring Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke. This work was controversial for Bonet given its nudity and sexual content. Per the Los Angeles Times, the rating was changed from X to R after opening in 1987, as the director cut out ten seconds of the film.
It seems that Bonet’s greater investment in her acting career was the driving force behind her involvement in the project: “I’m glad that I did this film this year … Because no matter how much you do for television, like, actors in this business, they just, they look at you and it’s like … that TV person … Like they can act and I can’t, you know,” she told The Washington Post. The actor further stood up against the backlash she received for “Angel Heart,” telling the Los Angeles Times that she wasn’t “concerned with how Denise was going to feel” and wasn’t attempting “to destroy her reputation.” Bonet boldly offered, “Instead, I felt obligated to my career and my (freedom of) artistic choice.”
