Biografia
Summer Selby is an American actress known for her work in film, television, stage, voice-over, print modeling, television production, and talk show hosting. Born on November 30th in Terre Haute, Indiana, she was raised on Chicago's South Side.
From the age of eight, Summer was drawn to impersonating others, unaware that this passion was acting. Her mother, an educator, enrolled her in a prestigious after-school academy on Chicago's South Side, where she studied modern dance, tap, modeling, and etiquette. In high school and at a private liberal arts college, she explored acting, gaining plenty of stage crew experience despite limited acting roles available to her demographic at the time.
After college, Summer began a corporate career while continuing to seek acting opportunities in Chicago, Indianapolis, and Dallas regional theaters. She was then chosen as a featured extra in the birthday cake party scene in Problem Child (1990), an experience that solidified her commitment to an acting career.
Often recognized for her "familiar" face, Summer starred as Harriet Tubman in the Emmy-nominated educational film The Quest for Freedom (1992), which was widely distributed to U.S. schools and aired on PBS every February for many years. She also appeared in two roles on the series Barney & Friends (1992) and in the TV movie Wishbone's Dog Days of the West (1998).
She acted alongside LeAnn Rimes in Rimes’ first film, the holiday classic Holiday in Your Heart (1997), which also featured Bernadette Peters. Summer landed the lead in director John Carstarphen’s debut film Weekend of Our Discontent (1993) and has since worked with notable actors including Nia Peeples, C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Duffy, Paul Adelstein, and Sarah Wayne Callies. Audiences continue to enjoy her performances in Walker Texas Ranger, Prison Break, and as the nosy neighbor in Did I Kill My Mother?
Among her national ad work, Summer was an original print model 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), honoring comedienne Gilda Radner, and holds extensive national voice-over credits.
Summer produced and hosted her second talk show, Grown Folk (2012), which aired in Dallas and online. She co-starred in alternative/blues musician Benjamin Booker’s debut music video The Future Is Slow Coming (2015) and appeared in writer/director Carlos Bido’s enigmatic film Finding Hope (2013).
More recently, Summer has appeared alongside Jamie Foxx, Tommy Lee Jones, Matt Czuchry, and Manish Dayal in various film and TV projects; in the Italian international crime mini-series ZeroZeroZero; as the mother of an African astronaut in the visually stunning space mini-series The First, directed by acclaimed Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland; and in a recurring role as the devoted mother to Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s character, Dr. AJ Austin, on the popular FOX series The Resident, now streaming on Hulu.
Summer continues to refine her craft through diverse roles in film, television, and theater.
