Kim Fields
Kim Fields is an actor, born 1969.
Fields has been famous since childhood, and unusually, the career survived it. She was on Good Times in the late 1970s, then spent the 1980s as Dorothy "Tootie" Ramsey, first on Diff'rent Strokes and then across the whole run of its spin-off The Facts of Life, which is still the role most people greet her with.
The second act is the better one. As Regine Hunter on Living Single she played a mercenary, fashion-obsessed, entirely unapologetic adult woman, about as far from Tootie as the same actress could travel, and she did it inside one of the sharpest sitcom ensembles of the 1990s. That show is the reason her comic timing gets discussed by people who were not watching in 1980.
She has worked steadily since, and moved behind the camera as a director as well. The Upshaws gave her a long-running current sitcom role as Regina. The self-aware credits are worth noting too: Miss Horn on Kenan & Kel, herself on The Real Housewives of Atlanta, and a turn under her own name in The Comeback, a former sitcom child appearing in a series about what happens to former sitcom actors. The film work has been lighter, What to Expect When You're Expecting and A Question of Faith and a Christmas picture or two.
Movies (7)
TV (13)
Where to start with Kim Fields
Skip past the childhood work and go to Living Single, which is not a nostalgia recommendation. Regine is the best-written part Fields has had and the one that shows the range: vain, funny, transactional about men, and never once played for the audience's approval.
The Facts of Life is the childhood work, worth an episode or two just to hear how much of the timing was already in place. The Upshaws is the current version, a broad family sitcom she anchors comfortably. Then the curiosities: The Comeback, where she plays herself inside a satire about exactly the sort of career she has had, and Kenan & Kel for anyone whose childhood ran through Nickelodeon. A Question of Faith is the dramatic outlier if you want one.