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:
“Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before you as a complete thing, I have to recall things gone far, gone deep, sunk into this life or that and become part of it; dreams, too, things surrounding me, and the inmates, those old half-articulate ghosts who keep up their hauntings by day and night ... shadows of people one might have been; unborn selves.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“... scepticism ... can never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill ...”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)