The Kravitz family has entertainment in their blood. Not only are Lenny and Zoë both incredibly successful in music, film, and television, but their ancestor was also a familiar face of the American public.
When The Jeffersons star and American TV legend Marla Gibbs joined Lenny Kravitz for his Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony on Tuesday, March 12, she mentioned that his mom and her good friend would be “very proud” and “smiling on [them].” Then the two along with fellow entertainment veteran Hal Williams posed with a portrait of Lenny’s late mother.
Who was Lenny Kravitz’s famous mom?
Lenny Kravitz was born in New York City on May 26, 1964, to actress Roxie Roker and news executive and producer Sy Kravitz. Years later his mother would become famous for playing one-half of the first Caucasian-African-American married couple on prime-time TV as Helen Willians in the beloved CBS sitcom The Jeffersons.
Roker had her start on the stage after earning a drama degree from Howard University and studying classical acting in England. She was part of the New York City-based theater company The Negro Ensemble Company and integrated plays like Ododo, Rosalee Pritchard, and The River Niger, the latter of which earned her an Obie and Tony nomination for her performance as Mattie Williams.
Roker would go on to star in numerous small-screen roles including Roots, Punky Brewster, A Different World, and Fantasy Island. All the while she was raining only child Lenny who, by then, was becoming seriously devoted to his love of music, encouraged by his parents, who would divorce in 1985. Lenny and Roxie were very close and their relationship has served as a model in building his own with daughter Zoë, as he told People in 2020.
″I was a mama’s boy. She was a woman who never spoke badly about anybody, even if they deserved it. At her funeral, late actor Brock Peters said, ‘If Roxie met the devil himself, she’d say to him, ‘What a lovely red suit.’ The whole place burst out laughing because that was my mother. She’s going to find the positive thing that she can say or do in any situation.″
Lenny confessed to having pictures of his mother all around his various houses, and that he makes sure to “celebrate his ancestors.” “I know that those are the shoulders that I stand on, and I respect that very deeply,” he said.
Roxie Roker passed away at 66 years old, on December 2, 1995, of breast cancer.
