Vanessa Williams's Real Name: Vanessa Lynn Williams

Quick answer: The actress and singer is known professionally as Vanessa Williams. Biography.com and Encyclopedia.com independently give the fuller form Vanessa Lynn Williams and date her birth to March 18, 1963. Biography.com places the birth in the Bronx, New York, and says the family moved to Millwood, New York, when she was 12 months old. Encyclopedia.com places the birth in Millwood. This page records both place-names (Biography.com; Encyclopedia.com).

Real name and early life

Independent publishers support the documented full name Vanessa Lynn Williams. Biography.com says her parents, Milton and Helen, were music educators, and that they moved Vanessa and her brother, Chris, to Millwood so they could teach in the public schools there. Encyclopedia.com independently says she attended Syracuse University. Biography.com also says she decided to attend Syracuse and was a freshman there when, at 19, she took a summer job that later figured in a controversy around published photographs.

Career highlights

Biography.com says that in 1983 she was crowned the first African American Miss America. Encyclopedia.com independently says that, representing New York, she was named Miss America in 1984, the first African American in the pageant's history, and resigned on July 23, 1984, after the publication of photographs taken several years earlier that she had not authorized for publication. Biography.com independently places the end of a year-long reign in July 1984 and also describes those photographs as unauthorized. This page records both the 1983 crowning date and the 1984 title wording rather than treating them as a single unsourced year.

Biography.com says her debut album, The Right Stuff (1988), went gold, and that her second album, The Comfort Zone (1991), sold 2.2 million copies in the United States, with the single "Save the Best for Last" reaching No. 1 on the pop charts for five weeks. Encyclopedia.com independently names "Save the Best for Last," "Running Back to You," and "Colors of the Wind," and says she has been nominated for nine Grammy Awards. Biography.com later names television work including Ugly Betty and a 2010 role on Desperate Housewives, as well as the film Eraser (1996).

Name notes for searchers

People looking up Vanessa Williams or Vanessa Lynn Williams are looking for this American actress and singer, not other performers who share the same first and last name. Independent sources support the fuller form used in the title.