Music Williams first received public recognition for her musical abilities when she won the preliminary talent portion of the Miss America pageant with her rendition of "
Happy Days Are Here Again" (Williams would later be crowned Miss America 1984). On April 26, 2024, Williams released a new single, "
Legs (Keep Dancing)", the first from her ninth studio album,
Survivor, which was released on August 23, 2024. Williams launched her own record label, Mellian Music, for the release. On May 13, 2024, the digital single "Legs (Keep Dancing)" debuted on the US
Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales (
Billboard) chart in the number 3 position. The single's success marks Williams' first hit on the Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart. In July 2024, Williams released the single "Bop!", a collaboration with
Trixie Mattel and
Lion Babe. Vanessa Williams has surpassed 250 million total streams on
Spotify across all credits. She averages nearly 190K daily listeners on the platform.
Television and film Williams has had a successful career in television. Her first television appearance was on a 1984 episode of
The Love Boat followed by guest appearances in a number of popular shows. In 1995, Williams starred as Rose Alvarez in a television adaptation of the 1960 Broadway musical
Bye Bye Birdie and portrayed the nymph
Calypso in the 1997
Hallmark Entertainment miniseries
The Odyssey. In 2000, Williams starred in the
Lifetime film about the life of
Henriette DeLille,
The Courage to Love and in 2003, Williams read the narrative of Tempie Herndon Durham from the
WPA slave narratives in the
HBO documentary
Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives. with additional nominations in
2008 and
2009. In 2016, she joined the cast of
The Librarians, as recurring villainess General Cynthia Rockwell. She starred as Maxine Robinson in the
VH1 television series
Daytime Divas during its one season in 2017. for which she won Best Actress honors at the
Harlem International Film Festival, the African-American Women in Cinema Film Festival, and at the Santa Barbara African Heritage Film Festival. She also notably co-starred with
Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1996 film
Eraser,
Samuel L. Jackson in the 2000 soft reboot of
Shaft, the characters from
Sesame Street in the 1999 film
The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, as the Queen of Trash, and with
Miley Cyrus in the 2009 film
Hannah Montana: The Movie. Theatre Williams began her career on stage in the 1985 production,
One Man Band, as one of "the women". She followed it in 1989 as Laura in
Ron Milner's
Checkmates. In 1994, she broadened her ascendant music career into a theatrical role when she replaced
Chita Rivera as Aurora in the Broadway production of
Kiss of the Spider Woman. In 1998, she portrayed Della Green in the revival of
St. Louis Woman, and Carmen Jones in the 2002
Kennedy Center Special Performance of
Carmen Jones. In 2013, she starred as Jessie Mae Watts in the
Horton Foote play
The Trip to Bountiful, which was later turned into a
2014 television film. In 2014, she starred in the Broadway musical,
After Midnight and in 2015, she appeared in a
PBS production of
Show Boat as
Julie La Verne. Williams starred as Margaret in
POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive on Broadway, with performances that began on April 14, 2022, at the
Shubert Theatre. Wi In February, 2024 Williams was cast to play the role of
Miranda Priestly, in a stage production of the
Devil Wears Prada at the
Dominion Theatre in
London's
West End.
Additional roles in New York City Williams served as the host of the 1994
Essence Awards, host of the 1998
NAACP Image Awards, host of the 2002 documentary, ''It's Black Entertainment,
host of The 6th Annual TV Land Awards in 2007, host of the 36th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards in 2009, and host of the documentary Dreams Come True: A Celebration of
Disney Animation'' in 2009. Williams is a spokesmodel for
Proactiv Solution, and was the first African-American spokesmodel for
L'Oréal cosmetics in the 1990s. In 2018, Williams returned as a spokesmodel for L'Oréal as part of their "Age Perfect" campaign alongside fellow ambassadors
Helen Mirren,
Julianne Moore, and
Jane Fonda. In 2000, she appeared on
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire as a contestant, and again in August 2009, as a celebrity guest during the show's tenth anniversary prime-time special editions, winning $50,000 for her charity. In a commercial that began running during
Super Bowl XLVI in 2012, Williams voiced the new character Ms. Brown, a brown
M&M. In 2020, Williams was the winner of
season 1, episode 2 of ''
RuPaul's Secret Celebrity Drag Race'', and donated her prize of $20,000 to the LGBTQ charity
The Trevor Project.
Fashion In March 2016, Williams launched her own clothing line,
V. by Vanessa Williams, for
EVINE Live. == Personal life ==