Personal Life
She has been married twice. Her first marriage, to public relations consultant Ramon Hervey II, was from 1987 to 1997. Hervey later became Williams' manager. The couple had two daughters, Melanie (born June 30, 1987), Jillian (born June 19, 1989), and one son, Devin (born April 14, 1993). William's daughter Jillian, following in her mother's footsteps, released her first single with the duo Lion Babe in 2012.
Her second marriage was to NBA basketball player Rick Fox. They married in September 1999 and have a daughter, Sasha, born on May 1, 2000. After The National Enquirer published pictures of Fox kissing and hugging another woman in mid-2004, Fox's representative announced that the couple had been "headed toward divorce" for over a year. A few months later in August 2004, Fox filed for divorce. Fox acted alongside Williams in two episodes during the second season of Ugly Betty, playing the role of Dwayne, Wilhelmina's sexy bodyguard.
During an interview with Barbara Walters which aired on February 24, 2008, Williams not only admitted to using Botox but also called it "a miracle drug, no cutting, nothing, and I love it. But I also want to act so I don't do it to freeze my face." Williams is a practicing Roman Catholic. Williams and her mother, Helen, co-authored a memoir titled You Have No Idea, published in April 2012. In the book, Williams discusses her childhood, rise to fame, and personal struggles, including the fact that she was sexually molested by a woman when she was 10 years old. She also spoke candidly about her decision to have an abortion as a teenager. Williams is a supporter of gay rights and same sex marriage and in 2011, she participated in a HRC campaign entitled “New Yorkers for Marriage Equality".
Read more about this topic: Vanessa L. Williams
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, personal and/or life:
“Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters “woman’s peculiar sphere,” her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)
“I believe that the highest virtue is to be happy, living in the greatest truth, not submitting to the falsehood of these personal times.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travaileth;
In his heart is a blind desire,
In his eyes foreknowledge of death:
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)