Life and Career
Chong was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, the daughter of Maxine Sneed and Tommy Chong. She and her sister Robbi were raised by her grandmother, Tommy Chong's mother. Chong's father is of Chinese, Scottish-Irish, and French ancestry and her mother is of Afro-Canadian and Cherokee descent. Her sister Robbi Chong is a model and actress.
Chong is known for appearing in the films Quest for Fire (1981), The Color Purple (1985), Choose Me (1984), Beat Street (1984), Commando (1985), Cheech & Chong's The Corsican Brothers (1984), and Far Out Man (1990), in the latter two appearing with her father. Chong won the Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in 1983 for Quest for Fire. Chong saw her most active period in films during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. However, she continues working in television and film.
Chong also played the love interest in Mick Jagger's video "Just Another Night".
Chong has been married twice and has one son named Morgan. Her second husband was actor C. Thomas Howell, her co-star in the feature film Soul Man. They divorced in 1990. She was considered for the role of Anne Lindsey in Highlander:The Series
Read more about this topic: Rae Dawn Chong
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or career:
“It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The shortest way out of Manchester is notoriously a bottle of Gordon’s gin; out of any businessman’s life there is the mirage of Paris; out of Paris, or mediocrity of talent and imagination, there are all the drugs, from subtle, all-conquering opium to cheating, cozening cocaine.”
—William Bolitho (1890–1930)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)