S. Epatha Merkerson

S. Epatha Merkerson

Birth : 1952-11-28, Saginaw, Michigan, USA

History

S. Epatha Merkerson (born Sharon Epatha Merkerson) is an American film, stage, and television actress. She has won a Golden Globe, Emmy Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, Obie Award, 4 NAACP Image Awards, and 2 Tony Award nominations. She is best known for her role as NYPD Lieutenant Anita Van Buren (1993–2010) on the long-running NBC police procedural drama series Law & Order, as well as the Law & Order TV movie Exiled. She appeared in 390 episodes of the series, more than any other cast member. She has a starring role as Sharon Goodwin on NBC's Chicago Med. She also had a recurring role as Reba (the mail carrier) on Pee-wee's Playhouse, and Ms. St. Marth on the TV series Here and Now. She has appeared in feature films including She's Gotta Have It, Loose Cannons, Jacob's Ladder, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Random Hearts, Radio, Black Snake Moan, Lincoln (2012), and Peeples. She has also appeared in TV movies including A Place for Annie, A Mother's Prayer, Breaking Through, Lackawanna Blues, and The Gabby Douglas Story.

Profile

S. Epatha Merkerson
S. Epatha Merkerson
S. Epatha Merkerson

Movies

Barbecue
Lillie Anne
The O’Mallerys have gathered in their local park to share some barbecue and rousing straight talk while they await their youngest sister’s arrival. What appears to be a festive occasion is actually something quite different.
The Great Work Begins: Scenes from Angels in America
Belize
An all-star livestream benefit performance of scenes from Angels in America in support of amfAR’s Fund to Fight COVID-19.
Blood Sugar Rising
narrator
Blood Sugar Rising follows the diabetes epidemic in the U.S. Diabetes and pre-diabetes affect over 100 million people in the US, costing more than $325 billion each year. Blood Sugar Rising puts human faces to these statistics, exploring the history and science of the illness through portraits of Americans whose stories shape the film.
You Can Go
Mrs. Bryant
A school administrator talks down a troubled student.
Year by the Sea
Liz
Hoping to reclaim who she was before marriage and children, an empty nester retreats to Cape Cod where she embarks upon a quest to set herself free.
The Challenger
Jada
A legendary trainer comes out of retirement to help an underdog boxer fight his way to a better life.
Life's Essentials with Ruby Dee
Self
In this open-letter style documentary, Ruby Dee & Ossie Davis' rich lives guide their grandson on his personal quest to master lasting love, conscious art, and undying activism.
The Gabby Douglas Story
Miss Caroline
The true story of Gabby Douglas who becomes the first African American to be named Individual All-Around Champion in artistic gymnastics at the Olympic Games.
Peeples
Daphne Peeples
The story follows what happens when a child psychologist surprises his girlfriend by showing up at her political family's annual get-together at their Sag Harbor vacation home only to find them desperately in need of therapy.
The Contradictions of Fair Hope
Director
This unique documentary sets the stage in rural Alabama, prior to Emancipation, and traces the development, struggles, contributions and gradual loss of tradition of one of the last remaining African American benevolent societies.
Lincoln
Lydia Smith
The revealing story of the 16th US President's tumultuous final months in office. In a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of generations to come.
We Heard the Bells: The Influenza of 1918
Narrator (voice)
We meet individuals from marginalized communities who describe what it was like to live through the 1918 flu pandemic. Their experiences raise questions about the pandemic: why did it kill so many people? Why were so many of the dead young adults? Where did this lethal flu come from? How can we keep a pandemic like that from occurring again? The film follows the search for answers from an expedition to Alaska in 1951 to collect tissue from bodies buried in the permafrost, to the scientists and epidemiologists working on the same questions today. It explains the relevance of research into the 1918 pandemic to the threat of current and future flu pandemics.
Mother and Child
Ada
The lives of three women have a commonality: adoption. Karen is a physical therapist who regrets that, as a teenager, she gave up her daughter for adoption. Elizabeth was an adopted child and is now a successful lawyer, but her personal life lacks warmth. Lucy and her husband have failed to conceive and now hope to adopt a baby to make their family complete.
The Six Wives of Henry Lefay
Effa
A presumed-dead man's current wife and former wives squabble over his funeral arrangements.
Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun
Narrator
Zora Neale Hurston, path-breaking novelist, pioneering anthropologist and one of the first black women to enter the American literary canon (Their Eyes Were Watching God), established the African American vernacular as one of the most vital, inventive voices in American literature. This definitive film biography, eighteen years in the making, portrays Zora in all her complexity: gifted, flamboyant, and controversial but always fiercely original.
Girl, Positive
Ariel Winters
A popular high school girl finds out that a boy she slept with is HIV positive.
Slipstream
Bonnie
Aging screenwriter Felix Bonhoeffer has lived his life in two states of existence: in reality and his own interior world. While working on a murder mystery script, and unaware that his brain is on the verge of implosion, Felix is baffled when his characters start to appear in his life, and vice versa.
Black Snake Moan
Angela
A God-fearing bluesman takes to a wild young woman who, as a victim of childhood sexual abuse, is looking everywhere for love, but never quite finding it.
The Best of The Tony Awards: The Plays
Berniece (segment "The Piano Lesson")
The Great White Way comes into your living room via this disc of rare performances from some of Broadway's brightest luminaries. Culled from clips from the Tony Awards shows, this unique collection features acting powerhouses James Earl Jones, Annette Bening, Joan Allen, Joe Mantegna, Gary Sinise and Maggie Smith, among others, performing works by such playwrights as August Wilson, David Mamet, Wendy Wasserstein and more.
Lackawanna Blues
Rachel "Nanny" Crosby
In a story fueled by rhythm and blues, a young boy's life is shaped by love and the stories of a cast of characters in the boarding house where he lives in 1960s Lackawanna, New York.
Jersey Girl
Doctor #1
Ollie Trinke is a young, suave music publicist who seems to have it all, with a new wife and a baby on the way. But life deals him a bum hand when he's suddenly faced with single fatherhood, a defunct career and having to move in with his father. To bounce back, it takes a new love and the courage instilled in him by his daughter.
Radio
Maggie
High school football coach, Harold Jones befriends Radio, a mentally-challenged man who becomes a student at T.L. Hanna High School in Anderson, South Carolina. Their friendship extends over several decades, where Radio transforms from a shy, tormented man into an inspiration to his community.
The Rising Place
Lessie Watson
The close friendship of two young women, each of a different race, and their struggle to find purpose in their lives during this time of social injustice and world war.
Random Hearts
Nea
After losing their spouses in a plane crash, an internal affairs cop and a congresswoman find each other's keys in each other's loved ones' possessions and discover that the two were having an affair.
Paul Robeson: Here I Stand
Eslanda Robeson (voice)
Paul Robeson: Here I Stand presents the life and achievements of an extraordinary man. Athlete, singer, and scholar, Robeson was also a charismatic champion of the rights of the poor working man, the disfranchised and people of color. He led a life in the vanguard of many movements, achieved international acclaim for his music and suffered tremendous personal sacrifice. His story is one of the great dramas of the 20th century, spanning an international canvas of social upheaval and ideological controversy.
Exiled
Anita Van Buren
NYPD Detective Mike Logan, who was demoted to a beat on Staten Island after punching a corrupt politician, seeks to solve the grisly murder of a prostitute and thereby help regain his old job in Manhattan.
An Unexpected Life
Beverly Hawkins
Sequel to "An Unexpected Family."
Breaking Through
Barbara
Laura is a 20 year old deaf girl who has never been taught sign language. She is rescued from neglect and physical abuse by Pam, a social worker. Pam teaches her how to communicate and uncovers Laura's true personality.
A Mother's Prayer
Ruby
Rosemary Holmstrom is struggling to bring up her son following the death of her husband. When she is diagnosed with AIDS, at first she refuses to believe it, but soon turns her attentions to the problem of what will happen to her son when she dies.
A Place for Annie
Alice
Baby Annie is HIV positive and has been left in the clinic by her drug addicted mother. To prevent that she's deported to a home where they'd just wait for her to die, nurse Susan takes charge of Annie at her home. Two years later she plans too adopt her -- but suddenly Annie's mother reappears and demands her back. And under the law, Susan, as foster-mother, has no claim to the child.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Tarissa Dyson
Set ten years after the events of the original, James Cameron’s classic sci-fi action flick tells the story of a second attempt to get the rid of rebellion leader John Connor, this time targeting the boy himself. However, the rebellion has sent a reprogrammed terminator to protect Connor.
Jacob's Ladder
Elsa
After returning home from the Vietnam War, veteran Jacob Singer struggles to maintain his sanity. Plagued by hallucinations and flashbacks, Singer rapidly falls apart as the world and people around him morph and twist into disturbing images. His girlfriend, Jezzie, and ex-wife, Sarah, try to help, but to little avail. Even Singer's chiropractor friend, Louis, fails to reach him as he descends into madness.
Navy Seals
Jolena
During a rescue mission, a team of Navy Seals discover that a terrorist group have access to deadly US built Stinger missiles, and must set out to locate and destroy them before they can be used.
Loose Cannons
Rachel
Mac, the two-fisted, savvy cop finds that he's being saddled with a new partner, a known burnout, to work with him on a new and difficult case. The new partner is Ellis, an amazing detective, one who puts Sherlock Holmes to shame with his lightning-fast deductions. But he keeps assuming the personalities of entire casts of Television shows. This can be a problem when people begin shooting at them.
Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special
Reba
Pee-wee Herman and pals are celebrating Christmas in the Playhouse in their own creative ways: Pee-wee makes a list for Santa Claus 1 1/2 miles long, teaches Little Richard how to ice skate, goes for a sleigh ride with Magic Johnson, commands Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello to make Christmas cards, receives a long phone call from Dinah Shore, even has more musical fun with k.d. lang, the Del Rubio Triplettes and Charo! Finally, Big Red arrives and announces that Pee-wee's Christmas list was so big, he didn't have enough presents for all the children of the world. Will Pee-wee follow his own advice and help others?
She's Gotta Have It
Doctor Jamison
The story of Nola Darling's simultaneous sexual relationships with three different men is told by her and by her partners and other friends. All three men wanted her to commit solely to them; Nola resists being "owned" by a single partner.
Desmond's Not Here Anymore
Selma
Abigail battles moving her elderly mother with dementia out from the family home. When her mother unconsciously haunts her by continually questioning Desmond's whereabouts it forces her to finally face the question.
Sexual Healing
Alberta Gay
A look at the last years of Marvin Gaye's life, from his parting ways with Motown and self-imposed exile to Europe, to his relationship with Freddy Cousaert, the promoter who guided the singer through the recording of his biggest-selling album, Midnight Love.