Photo credits: Antenna TV/Twitter

Berlinda Tolbert (born November 4, 1949) is an American film and television actress.

Tolbert is best known for her role as Jenny Willis Jefferson, the daughter of Tom and Helen Willis on the CBS sitcom The Jeffersons, which originally aired from 1975 until 1985.

Tolbert majored in theater at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. She also studied drama in London. In a 2013 interview, Tolbert stated, “I’ve only had one job in my entire life… professional actress.” She got her first film part from Martin Scorsese in the early 1970s, when she was in acting school.

On The Jeffersons, Tolbert played Jenny, the daughter of interracial couple Tom and Helen Willis, friends of George and Louise Jefferson. During the series, Jenny became engaged to Lionel Jefferson, the son of George and Louise; they married and had a daughter.

Tolbert played the role of Jenny for the run of the series, from 1975-1985. Tolbert was born just one day after Mike Evans (1949–2006), the original actor who played her boyfriend/husband Lionel. They were also both born in North Carolina.

As of May 2019, Tolbert, Marla Gibbs, Jay Hammer, and Damon Evans (Lionel #2) are the last surviving members of The Jeffersons main cast. In her personal life, Tolbert married journalist Bob Reid in 1979.

In 1981, Tolbert competed for the CBS team on Battle of the Network Stars. In 1983, Tolbert starred in the Maya Angelou play On A Southern Journey. Following the cancellation of The Jeffersons in 1985, Tolbert appeared in films including Harlem Nights, Goodfellas, and Patriot Games, and television shows including ER, Six Feet Under, and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Tolbert appeared in the 2011 indie film Last Ride on the Midwest Pacific.

The majority of this page’s content was sourced from a Wikipedia article. The contents are publicly available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.