Ellen Holly, barrier-breaking “One Life to Live” star, dies at 92

With her long-running role as Carla Gray, Holly became America's first Black soap opera star.

Ellen Holly, the One Life to Live actress who broke ground as the first Black performer in a starring role on daytime television in the U.S., died in her sleep Wednesday at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx. She was 92.

Her publicist, Cheryl L. Duncan, confirmed the news to EW.

Born in 1931 in New York City, Holly began her career as a member of the Actors Studio, appearing in Broadway productions of shows including A Hand Is on the Gate and Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright. During her time on stage, she worked alongside actors like James Earl Jones, Jack Lemmon, and Roscoe Lee Browne. Though she had small roles on TV series including The Nurses and Dr. Kildare, Holly struggled to find consistent work on screen early in her career.

In 1968, The New York Times published a letter to the editor from Holly titled "How Black Do You Need To Be?" which criticized the media, the entertainment industry, and audiences for maintaining a narrow, stringent view of what Black performers should look like. Such thinking, Holly wrote, made it "virtually impossible" for light-skinned Black actors like her to find work.

The letter caught the attention of One Life to Live creator Agnes Nixon, who cast Holly on the show as Carla Gray, a light-skinned Black actress whose character was inspired by Holly's own experiences. Carla was first introduced as Carla Benari and presented as an Italian American woman; her heritage wasn't verified until five months after her introduction, when she revealed that her mother was Lillian Hayman's Sadie Grey.

Before that revelation, Carla, who was engaged to white doctor Jim Craig, kissed Peter DeAnda’s Price Trainor, a Black character, which caused controversy among some viewers who were shocked to see a seemingly white woman kiss a Black man on screen. Later in the series, Carla married Al Freeman Jr.'s Ed Hall and adopted Laurence Fishburne's Joshua. Holly left the series in 1980 and returned in 1983, then left again in 1985. In her book One Life: The Autobiography of an African American Actress, Holly said she was fired from the show when she left the second time.

Holly reunited with Fishburne in her most prominent film role, in Spike Lee's 1988 musical dramedy School Daze. She then joined the soap Guiding Light as Judge Collier, appearing on the show from 1989 to 1993. Her last screen role came in the 2002 TV movie 10,000 Black Men Named George.

In the 1990s, Holly became a librarian at a public library in White Plains, N.Y., the town she called home for many years. She also spent her final years preparing a documentary about her life and her prominent family, which included abolitionists, U.S. ambassadors, and pioneering Black women in such fields as medicine and education. She is survived by grandnieces, cousins, and other family members.

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