Role as mother defines actress’ career

WASHINGTON — When casting Tina Turner’s mom in the 1993 film “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” the director turned to a relative unknown by the name of Jenifer Lewis.

The actress, who had done just a few small film and TV parts after arriving in Hollywood via Broadway and cabarets, is only about two years older than the film’s star, Angela Bassett. So when she got the call, she almost slammed down the phone. That is, until they told her how much she was going to be paid.

“Hell, for that money,” Lewis recalled, “I would have played the daddy.”

That film established Lewis in what was to become her signature role: the matriarch. Lewis launched a career of playing the mother, auntie or grandmother to such stars as Will Smith, Tupac Shakur and Whitney Houston. These days, she plays Anthony Anderson’s mother on the ABC show “Blackish.”

The 60-year-old actress-dancer-singer is on a mini-tour to promote her new memoir, “The Mother of Black Hollywood.” She chronicles her life as a 1980s musical theater performer, watching hundreds of her theater friends die of AIDS. She writes about being raped as a teen by the pastor of her childhood church, her battle with bipolar disorder and sex addiction, and her gradual emergence as a Hollywood mainstay.

Lewis grew up watching all-around entertainers such as Judy Garland, Sammy Davis Jr. and Pearl Bailey and trying to master acting, singing and dancing.

“I have had that charisma and that presence since I was born,” she said. “I came out my mama singing a ... Ethel Merman song,” she said. “I didn’t cry. I sang: ‘You’ll be swell. You’ll be great.’ ”

In addition to her steady work with “Blackish,” she’s just completed a new Disney animated TV series based on the movie “Big Hero 6.”

She also has one more dream: a one-woman show on Broadway.

I have “this ability to hold people in the palm of my hand. But I wanted to put them in my heart. So when I get the audience in my palm, it’s my responsibility to put them in my heart, too,” she says and then refers to her book.

“This is my story. This is my song,” she said. “I came through the fire. And now, I’m skipping, bitches.”