Lela Rochon biography videography movies and photos

Lela Rochon

"...This is the most exciting film for black women since The Color Purple and I'm a part of it!" -Lela Rochon, on her role in Waiting to Exhale

Lela Rochon Staples was born April 17th, 1964, in Los Angeles, California, where twenty years later she would graduate in the class of 1984 from Cerritos High School. Lela knew she was destined for entertainment world greatness. If you were one of the early viewers of MTV, you may have first garnered a glance of the 5'9" beauty in the 1983 video for Lionel Richie's, "All Night Long." Lela was also a fixture in another '80s icon: she was a "spudette" in the Spudz McKenzie Budweiser commercials.By the end of the decade, after doing a variety of little known films, she landed the part of Sunshine in the 1989 Eddie Murphy film, Harlem Nights.

As the '90s came, Lela worked her way into some other films such as The Meteor Man and Boomerang, once again with Eddie Murphy. While the WB network offered lots of work for African-American actors and actresses in the mid-90s, the parade of sitcoms and dramas rarely lasted long. This included a short stint for Lela on a 1995 one-season run of The Wayans Bros., starring Marlon and Shawn Wayans of Scary Movie fame

However, later that year Lela would land the greatest role of her life, as Robin in 1995's Waiting to Exhale. During the rest of the decade, Lela landed roles in films such as 1998's The Big Hit and Why Do Fools Fall in Love, and 1999's Any Given Sunday.

For the last few years, you may have noticed that Lela has been credited as Lela Rochon Fuqua, after having married director Antoine Fuqua in 1999. The couple had their first child and Lela plans to take some time off to raise their child, but will be back soon to take over the world.