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You ever seen Harlem royalty? Here I am!"
--Lydia Nicole

Some royalty collects shoes; some collect taxes. This Harlem princessa collects life's nuggets and turns them into gold. Lydia Nicole has the unusual ability to transcend borders, blending ghetto grittiness with ethereal vulnerability. It is a trait that has marked her film and TV acting, stand-up comedy and explosive one-woman show, Calling Up Papi.

Lydia's world has been a kaleidoscope of cultures. She grew up on the border of Harlem and Spanish Harlem, the daughter of a Puerto Rican pimp and black prostitute, in a world both fierce and poetic. She witnessed a fatal street beating at 11, got make-up tips from a transvestite named Fifi, but managed to hone both her moxy and her imagination.

At 13, Lydia talked her way into a job at Manhattan's top-rated R&B radio station, WBLS-FM. Under the guidance of legendary D.J. Frankie Crocker, Lydia went from "go-for" to music director by the time she turned 18.

Shortly thereafter, Lydia traded Harlem for Hollywood. Her acclaimed turn as a troubled youth in Stand and Deliver paved the way for appearances in Indecent Proposal and Hollywood Shuffle, and TV's Thirtysomething, Martial Law, The Roseanne Show. TV movies include NBC's Honey Boy and A Death in California and HBO's Stranger by Night. Along the way, she earned a Youth in Film Award, Pepsi's Artist of the New Generation and accolades from magazines like Latin Style, which called her "a sparkling, straight-up, hold-no-punches beauty, a wolf in sheep's clothing."

While producers tapped her acting, Lydia began to turn her childhood misadventures into a comedy routine that quickly landed her on BET's Comic View, regular spots at Hollywood's famed Comedy Store, a mention as Hispanic Magazine's Top 100 Latino Comics list, and gigs around the U.S. and Puerto Rico, where she performed in Spanish. ("My father's a pimp, my mother's a prostitute," her act begins. "Out here that makes me an actress. . .")

She also co-founded the critically acclaimed stand-up comedy troupe, The Hot & Spicy Mamitas, who released a CD on Uproar Records and garnered interest from HBO for their own comedy special.


Her survival instincts and ability to turn a turbulent upbringing into a life of celebration. Lydia has become an inspiration for thousands of at-risk teens. She speaks at inner-city schools, churches and juvenile correctional facilities, an experience she is turning into a life skills book for young adults. She has also served as a spokesperson for Athletes & Entertainers For Kids, PEACE Fund and Artsreach, with whom she collaborated on the award-winning documentary When The Bough Breaks about incarcerated teen mothers. This past year, Lydia took two

extraodinary workshops into the California Youth Authority, A Garden Party and Boys to Kings. A Garden Party program taught incarcerated females to respect and nurture the garden they helped plant. Boys to Kings was a rights of passage workshop that initiated young men into adulthood. Lydia has recently completed a new solo show entitled "In The Men's Corner", based on her rights of passage workshop.

Ms. Nicole lives in Los Angeles with her teenage daughter, Alexia, tends her garden and paints everything red.

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