Happy Birthday Grace Jones – (May 19th)

Originally from Spanish Town, St Catherine, Jamaica, Grace Jones moved to Syracuse, ny when she was 12.  She studied the arts at Syracuse University and appeared in her first musical when she was approached by a drama professor who proposed that she work with him during a play he was putting on in Philadelphia.

Jones later moved to the big apple City and signed on as a model with Wilhelmina Models, then moved to Paris, France where her androgynous, bold, dark-skinned appearance was so highly visible, she began to model for Yves Saint-Laurent, Claude Montana, Kenzo Takada, Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, Hans Feurer, and Azzedine Alaïa, and she or he appeared on the covers of “Elle”, “Vogue”, and “Der Stern.”

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She began her movie career playing small parts, her first being within the blaxploitation flick Gordon’s War (1973) followed by an uncomfortable cameo within the unwatchable French sex comedy Let’s Make a Dirty Movie Movie (1976). The roles of Zula, the amazonian warrior within the American sword and sorcery/adventure film Conan the Destroyer (1984); May Day, the secondary antagonist within the 14th Bond film A View to a Kill (1985); and Katrina, a bloodthirsty Egyptian vampire queen within the comedy horror Vamp (1986) helped Jones establish her stamp in film.

In recent years, Jones’s primary focus is sharing the vulnerability behind her larger-than-life persona. Jones and director Sophie Fiennes released the documentary Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (2017). Article and photo courtesy VP Records.