ANNA DEAVERE SMITH is probably most recognizable in popular culture as Gloria Akalitus on Showtime’s hit series Nurse Jackie, or as Nancy McNally, national security advisor on NBC’s former hit The West Wing. Yet, her work in the theater has been a central part of her artistic life. It has been said that she created a new form of theater.

When granted the prestigious MacArthur Award, her work was described as “a blend of theatrical art, social commentary, journalism, and intimate reverie.” Ms. Smith’s theater combines the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with the art of interpreting their words through performance. These one-woman shows are a part of a series she began in the early 1980s called On the Road: A Search for American Character. A reviewer for The New York Times, writing about her Broadway show Twilight: Los Angeles, which depicted the 1992 Los Angeles riots, said of her performance that she’s “the ultimate impressionist: she does people’s souls.” Jack Kroll of Newsweek proclaimed the work “an American masterpiece.”

Her most recent work Let Me Down Easy deals with the subject of health care. It ran for six months at New York’s Second Stage Theater, and then toured for nine months around the US. Its PBS broadcast (January 2012) is a part of PBS’s arts initiative.

She has received two Tony nominations, an Obie, Drama Desk Award, Special Citation from the New York Drama Critics Circle, and numerous other honors.

She has been featured in several films, among them The American President, The Human Stain, Life Support, and Rachel Getting Married.

She produced, wrote, and performed the film version of Twilight for PBS. Another of her plays, Fires in the Mirror, which examined a race riot in Crown Heights, Brooklyn (1991) was also created as a film for PBS.

She is author of Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines and Letters to a Young Artist (Random House). She has written for The New York Times, Newsweek, The New Yorker, OMagazine, Elle, Essence, and The Drama Review as well as other publications.

She has been invited to be and served as Artist in Residence in diverse environments: The Ford Foundation, MTV Networks, The Aspen Institute, the Center for American Progress, and Grace Cathedral, San Francisco.

She has several honorary degrees including those from Juilliard, The School of Visual Arts, University of Pennsylvania (2012), Wesleyan, Radcliffe, Northwestern, Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Barnard, Simmons College, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and others.

She is a University Professor at New York University.