Lynne Thigpen

Before there was any screen career, there was Godspell. Thigpen's first real attention came from the 1971 off-Broadway run, where the character she played was named Lynne and her number was "O Bless the Lord, My Soul", and she carried the part into the 1973 film version alongside David Haskell and Victor Garber. The theatre stayed her home ground for three decades, and it produced her single biggest prize: a Tony in 1997 for playing Dr. Judith Kaufman in An American Daughter.

Film used her differently, and used her constantly. Casting directors worked out early that she could establish authority faster than almost anyone available, so she got the judges, the doctors, the nurses, the officials and, in Bicentennial Man, the President. The list is a tour of American movies from 1979 onward: the D.J. in The Warriors, Jo in Tootsie, Leonna Barrett in Lean On Me, Kelly Noble in Bob Roberts, Janet in The Paper, Mrs. Williams in The Insider, Carla Howard in Shaft, Judge Daniels in Anger Management. None of them are leads. Nearly all of them are the point in the scene where the drifting stops.

Television gave her the wider audience and the recognition, with six Daytime Emmy nominations for that side of her work. Two of those parts reached an enormous number of children who had no idea they were listening to one of New York's best stage actors: The Chief of ACME Crimenet on the Carmen Sandiego game shows, and Luna the Moon on Bear in the Big Blue House. She was playing Ella Farmer on The District when she died in 2003.