Hazelle Goodman is an actress from Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is an archipelagic state in the southern Caribbean, lying just off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and south of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles...

. As a child she was inspired to become an actress after viewing The Sound of Music

The Sound of Music (film)

Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music is a 1965 American musical film directed by Robert Wise and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. The film is based on the Broadway musical The Sound of Music, with songs written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and with the musical...

, before her family moved to New York where she was raised in the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn.

Career

After graduating from City College of New York

City College of New York

The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

 with a degree in drama, Goodman spent seven years developing her one woman show called Hazelle!. The show was adapted for the screen by HBO in 1995, and earned two Cable Ace nominations in the Best Comedy Special and Best Performer categories. In 1997, she became the first black woman to have a prominent role in a Woody Allen

Woody Allen

Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...

 film when she portrayed Cookie, a prostitute in Allen's Deconstructing Harry

Deconstructing Harry

Deconstructing Harry is a black comedy film by Woody Allen released in 1997. This film tells the story of a successful writer called Harry Block, played by Allen himself, who draws inspiration from people he knows in real-life, and from events that happened to him, sometimes causing these people to...

. Goodman also had a recurring role on Homicide: Life on the Street

Homicide: Life on the Street

Homicide: Life on the Street is an American police procedural television series chronicling the work of a fictional version of the Baltimore Homicide Unit. It ran for seven seasons on NBC from 1993 to 1999, and was succeeded by a TV movie, which also acted as the de-facto series finale...

 as Georgia Rae Mahoney, a key figure in a drug dealing family who is eventually murdered. On stage, in addition to her one woman show, she has also portrayed the Queen in Shakespeare's Cymbeline

Cymbeline

Cymbeline , also known as Cymbeline, King of Britain or The Tragedy of Cymbeline, is a play by William Shakespeare, based on legends concerning the early Celtic British King Cunobelinus. Although listed as a tragedy in the First Folio, modern critics often classify Cymbeline as a romance...

 and took part in the February 10, 2001, staging of Eve Ensler

Eve Ensler

Eve Ensler is an American playwright, performer, feminist and activist, best known for her play The Vagina Monologues.- Personal life :...

's The Vagina Monologues

The Vagina Monologues

The Vagina Monologues is an episodic play written by Eve Ensler which ran at the Off Broadway Westside Theatre after a limited run at AFRICA in 1996. Ensler originally starred in the production which was produced by David Stone, Nina Essman, Dan Markley, The Araca Group, Willa Shalit, Mike Skipper...

 at Madison Square Garden

Madison Square Garden

Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...

. Goodman went on to write and star in a second one woman show called To the Top, Top, Top!. She was also an original cast member of Spalding Gray

Spalding Gray

Spalding Rockwell Gray was an American actor, playwright, screenwriter, performance artist and monologuist...

: Stories Left to Tell, performing the late artists monologues that primarily dealt with adventure.

Selected filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1995	Hazelle!	Herself
1997	Deconstructing Harry Deconstructing Harry Deconstructing Harry is a black comedy film by Woody Allen released in 1997. This film tells the story of a successful writer called Harry Block, played by Allen himself, who draws inspiration from people he knows in real-life, and from events that happened to him, sometimes causing these people to...	Cookie
1997	Homicide: Life on the Street Homicide: Life on the Street Homicide: Life on the Street is an American police procedural television series chronicling the work of a fictional version of the Baltimore Homicide Unit. It ran for seven seasons on NBC from 1993 to 1999, and was succeeded by a TV movie, which also acted as the de-facto series finale...	Georgia Rae Mahoney	Multiple episodes
2001	Third Watch Third Watch Third Watch is an American television drama series which first aired on NBC from 1999 to 2005 for a total of 132 episodes, broadcast in 6 seasons of 22 episodes each....	Rita Golden	Multiple episodes
2001	Hannibal Hannibal (film) Hannibal is a 2001 psychological thriller film directed by Ridley Scott, adapted from the Thomas Harris novel of the same name. It is a sequel to the 1991 Academy Award-winning film The Silence of the Lambs that returns Anthony Hopkins to his iconic role as serial killer Hannibal Lecter...	Evelda Drumgo
2005	All the Invisible Children All the Invisible Children All the Invisible Children is a 2005 anthology film on the theme of childhood and exploitation. It is a collection of seven short films, each focused on a different child.The film has a total runtime of 116 minutes, averaging 16 minutes each....	Ms. Wright	"Jesus Children of America" segment
2011	EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a 2005 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer.The book's narrator is a nine-year-old boy named Oskar Schell. Two years before the story begins, Oskar's father dies on 9/11...

External links

• Goodman's personal website