Esther Sutherland

Esther Sutherland (August 29, 1932 – December 31, 1986) was an American film actress who made a name for herself in several features of the 1970s and 1980s often portraying nurses, maids, spinster aunts, Jamaican women, cleaning ladies, and matriarch types. She was born on August 29, 1932, in New York City, New York. Upon graduating from high school, she began her career as a jazz and gospel singer in various New York nightclubs and churches and later appeared in several well known theatre productions both on and off Broadway, some of which included The Piano Lesson, A Raisin in the Sun, Blues for Mister Charlie, Black Nativity, Dutchman, and revivals of Cabin in the Sky and Porgy and Bess. After two decades of professional singing and theatre work, she moved out to Los Angeles in 1968 and made her film debut in the dramatic feature Riverrun. She found a great deal of success in film an…