Biographie
Summer Selby is an American film, television and stage actress, voice-over talent, print model, television producer and talk show host, born November 30th in Terre Haute, Indiana and raised on Chicago's South Side.
From when Summer was 8 years old, she wanted to pretend to be other people, not knowing acting was the term for her ambition. Her mother, an educator, enrolled her in an esteemed after school academy on Chicago's South Side. There Summer studied modern dance, tap, modeling, and etiquette. She attempted to explore acting in high school and while attending a private liberal arts college. Stage crew experience was plentiful but roles were limited for Summer's demographic at that time.
After graduation, Summer began a corporate career but continued her pursuit of opportunities to act in Chicago, Indianapolis, and Dallas regional theaters. Then she was selected to be a featured extra in the exploding birthday cake party scene in Problem Child (1990) and she instantly committed to a career in acting.
Very often told by strangers and casual acquaintances she has a "familiar" face, Summer starred as Harriet Tubman in the Emmy nominated educational film The Quest for Freedom (1992), which was purchased by hundreds of US school districts who then showed it to thousands of students. The Quest for Freedom was broadcast on PBS stations throughout the country each February for decades. She then was cast in two roles in the Barney & Friends (1992) series as well as in the television movie Wishbone's Dog Days of the West (1998).
Summer played along side LeAnn Rimes in Ms. Rimes first film, the Christmas staple Holiday in Your Heart (1997), which also starred Bernadette Peters. She landed the lead role in the director John Carstarphen debut film Weekend of Our Discontent (1993) and has gone on to win roles appearing with some of Hollywood's favorites such as Nia Peeples, C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Duffy, Paul Adelstein and Sarah Wayne Callies. Viewers still enjoy Summer's 3 roles in Walker Texas, Ranger, Prison Break, and her role as the nosy neighbor in Did I Kill My Mother?
Among other national ad campaigns, Summer was one of the original print models for the American Heart Association's Go Red for Women campaign; she appeared in the Women in Film short Gilda's Club: A Special Place (2004), remembering the Saturday Night Live comedienne Gilda Radner; and she has extensive national voice-over credits.
Summer produced and hosted her second talk show, Grown Folk (2012), which aired in Dallas and on the internet; she co-stars in the alternative/blues musician Benjamin Booker debut music video The Future Is Slow Coming (Slow Coming/Wicked Waters) (2015); and she co-stars in the writer/director Carlos Bido enigmatic film Finding Hope (2013).
More recently, Summer appears alongside Jamie Foxx, Tommy Lee Jones, Matt Czuchry, and Manish Dayal in various film and TV projects; in the Italian produced and directed, international crime mini-series ZeroZeroZero; as an African astronaut's mother in the dazzling space mini-series The First, directed by the acclaimed Polish director Agnieszka Holland; and in a recurring role as uber mother to Malcolm-Jamal Warner's character, the beloved resident Dr AJ Austin, on the highly rated FOX series The Resident, now streaming on Hulu.
Summer continues to hone her craft in film, television and stage roles.
