Tessa Lynne Thompson is an American actress. She played Jackie Cook on the television noir Veronica Mars, Nyla Adrose in the film For Colored Girls, and civil rights activist Diane Nash in Selma, and starred as Samantha White in Dear White People.
Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Actor
Nominations
NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture, Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Actress: Drama
Movies
Creed, Thor: Ragnarok, Dear White People, Selma, For Colored Girls, Mississippi Damned, War on Everyone, When a Stranger Calls, Make It Happen, The Initiation of Sarah, Grantham & Rose, Everyday Black Man, Annihilation, The Human Contract, Betwixt, Points of Origin, Automotive
TV Shows
Hidden Palms, Veronica Mars, Westworld
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Quote
1
I eat almonds professionally, and I can't get enough of Yerbe Mate Cranberry Synergy Kombucha!
2
I am multiracial, and I went through different phases - at one point, I listened to Wu-Tang and hip-hop, and then the next year I listened to Joni Mitchell.
3
I think when any one kind of film does well, it creates a precedent and paves the way for more like it.
4
I think I've realized that when you are aiming to create a real body of work, you are as much defined by the things you don't do as by the things you do.
5
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I split my time between the West Coast and the East.
6
I try to pick interesting projects, the kind of projects that I would want to watch.
7
I think we just need to have a demand for fresh and nuanced movies.
8
Fashion is a funny thing to talk about. I think what you wear is definitely an extension of you, but I also think it's totally arbitrary.
9
The truth is, no, we don't live in a post-racial state anywhere in America, and this is particularly true in Hollywood.
10
I grew up as a kid looking at artists like David Bowie and Prince; I really admired them.
11
I'm sort of obsessed with Harlem. Just its history. My father did the music for a play called 'The Huey P. Newton Story,' and they did a lot of work in Harlem. So as a little girl, I spent a lot of time in Harlem Library.
12
I grew up partially in L.A. and partially in New York. In L.A., anything goes because it's really temperate. There aren't any fashion rules dictated by weather, whereas in New York, of course, there are. New York is seasonal, and also it's a fashion mecca, so people are a little more aware of how they put things together.
13
'Veronica Mars' was my first job, and for some reason, my character changed her hairstyle halfway through the season from curly to - I don't even know why - suddenly straight.
14
The term 'breakout' always makes me think of an inmate or some butterfly emerging out of a cocoon.
15
There was a period when I had a hard time reconciling all the different parts of me in a way that I thought would make sense to others.
16
As a kid, I loved going to lots of thrift stores with my parents. There was a period where I thought it was embarrassing, and then I started to get older - I realized they were really cool.
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Fact
1
Part of the Los Angeles band Caught A Ghost with Jesse Nolan. The band just completed its debut album Human Nature.
2
Was raised part time in Brooklyn, New York.
3
Went to school for Cultural Anthropology.
4
Her father is of Panamanian descent. Her mother is of half Mexican and half European descent.
5
Grand-daughter of actor/musician Bobby Ramos, one of the first Mexican Americans to have his own television show ("Latin Cruise" for KTLA).
6
Got "discovered" as a child walking down Hollywood Blvd. with her father.
7
Daughter of singer-songwriter Marc Anthony Thompson, of the New York based band "Chocolate Genius"
$4 Million
