You knew her as the feisty Druscilla Winters on CBS’s daytime series, “The Young and the Restless.” You may also remember when she co-starred in the CBS primetime television series “Diagnosis Murder” with Dick Van Dyke. You might even be aware that Victoria Rowell has been nominated twice for a Daytime Emmy and awarded several NAACP Image Awards.
What you may not know is that Rowell is the child of an unmarried white mother and a black father who left her to foster care as an infant. She subsequently landed in several foster care homes throughout the first 18 years of her life before going on to become a dancer, teacher, model, actress and bestselling author. It was as an actress that Victoria Rowell really began to shine, starring in theater, primetime, daytime and feature films, often opposite some of Hollywood’s most famous leading men, including Beau Bridges, Jim Carrey, Dick Van Dyke, Mario Van Peoples, Will Smith, Eddie Murphy and Samuel L. Jackson.
In her memoir, The Women Who Raised Me, Rowell pays tribute to the women she calls her “personal champions,” the women who guided and nurtured her during those formative early years. Among them are a black Bostonian who lived on a rural farm in Maine, a Paris-trained prima ballerina, and a mother and teacher living in a well-kept middle-class suburban neighborhood.
The Women Who Raised Me was first published in the spring of 2007 to much acclaim, hitting the New York Times bestsellers list. The paperback is due to be released this coming May, at which time Victoria Rowell will join me here in an interview for Connie Briscoe Presents.
She has a fantastic website with lots of celeb photos and a guest book–Victoria Rowell on the web.
1 comment so far ↓
I loved Diagnosis Murder and was sorry when they Xed the show. I have always though Ms. Rowell is under-appreciated as an actress. I will have to pick up the book when the paperback comes out.
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