“Hold on to your dreams…you can make it at 40 or 50, and it ain’t over when you’re 60. The best is yet to come,” says Sheryl Lee Ralph.
Sheryl Lee Ralph is a testament to the fact that success has no time limit. At 66 years old, Ralph inspired viewers as she received her first Primetime Emmy Award in her decades-long career. Now, two years later, the actress is celebrating another milestone as she prepares to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on January 29.
“I have worked towards this moment,” Ralph told People magazine. “It is my work that brought me to this time. It was not just given to me. It was work.”
“It’s easy to look at the highway and think it’s always been like that, but no, there was a time when it was a dirt road, and somebody had to bust rocks to clear it, and it wasn’t easy,” she added.
That work included her first film role in 1977’s “A Piece of the Action” alongside Sidney Poitier, her Tony-nominated performance in the original Broadway production of “Dreamgirls,” and appearances on sitcoms like “It’s a Living” and “Moesha.” With years of experience in the entertainment industry, Ralph has been enjoying a professional resurgence over the last few years, something she has Quinta Brunson to thank for. In 2021, Brunson tapped Ralph to join her sitcom “Abbott Elementary,” which has risen to award-winning success since its premiere.
“I’m in a show that is literally lightning in a bottle,” Ralph explained, later adding, “[I]t took a young person to see and value the work and offer me this way forward. That doesn’t happen a lot, but it happened to me.”
Though her journey to success may seem unconventional to most, Ralph’s mentors, like the late Cicely Tyson and Maya Angelou, knew she was destined for greatness.
“One day, I was on a plane, and Cicely Tyson said, ‘Many great things are going to happen to you. Many, many, many,’” Ralph recalled per People magazine. “The elders have been good to me, and they would not be surprised.”
Similarly, after working with Poitier, Ralph remembers the iconic director telling her: “ “I’m sorry the industry doesn’t have more to offer you because you deserve it. You better learn how to take care of yourself, because there are not too many people out there that can,’” Ralph remembered. “That’s how I started learning the things I needed in an industry that didn’t know what to do with me.”
Carrying the advice and legacies of all of those who came before her, the actress explains how she felt the presence of those “angels” when she won her Emmy Award.
“It was a complete shock,” she said reflecting on the moment. “I did not think it was going to be me. When they said my name, it was as if every angel in my life flew up and said, ‘Come on, come on. This is the moment. This is the time.’ When I got up there and did what I did, sang what I sang, said what I said, it was my whole life speaking for me, and it was never just for me, it was for others, because if it had not been for others, I wouldn’t be there.”
Ultimately, Ralph hopes her journey inspires others not to give up and instead realize that “If you don’t make it at 20 or 30, so what? Hold on to your dreams because you can make it at 40 or 50, and it ain’t over when you’re 60. The best is yet to come.”
!function(){var g=window;g.googletag=g.googletag||{},g.googletag.cmd=g.googletag.cmd||[],g.googletag.cmd.push(function(){g.googletag.pubads().setTargeting(“has-featured-video”,”true”)})}();
More must-reads:
