- Born
- Died
- Birth nameMadge Dorita Walters
- Height5′ 8½″ (1.74 m)
- Madge Sinclair was born Madge Dorita Walters on April 28, 1938 in Kingston, Jamaica, married young and had two sons. Madge worked as a teacher in Jamaica until she was 30. She left her two boys with their father and moved in 1968 to New York City to be an actress.
She began modeling and later acted with the New York Shakespearean Festival and at Joseph Papp's Public Theatre. In 1974, Madge made her film debut, playing Mrs. Scott in Conrack (1974). She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance as Bell Reynolds in the miniseries Roots (1977).
In 1982, shortly after joining the cast of Trapper John, M.D. (1979), Sinclair was diagnosed with leukemia. She continued to work, outliving the doctors' predictions by several years. On December 20, 1995, Madge Sinclair died at age 57 in Los Angeles, California, after a 13 year battle with leukemia.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Kelly E.F. Wiebe (senhue@mts.net
- SpousesDean Compton(August 18, 1982 - December 20, 1995) (her death)Royston Sinclair(1951 - 1969) (divorced, 2 children)
- ParentsHerbert WaltersJemima Walters
- She played LeVar Burton's mother in four different productions: Almos' a Man (1976), One in a Million: The Ron LeFlore Story (1978), Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). She also played his character's wife in Roots (1977), though by that time the role of Kunta Kinte had been assumed by John Amos.
- Co-starred with James Earl Jones five times, twice playing Queen to his King -- in Coming to America (1988), then in The Lion King (1994).
- Sinclair, having died in 1995 at Los Angeles' Good Samaritan Hospital following a 13 year battle with leukemia, could not reprise her role as Queen Sarabi in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (1998). The directors felt that replacing her voice could be seen as disrespectful and inappropriate. Sinclair was survived by her second husband, Dean Compton; her two sons; her mother; and her sister.
- She appeared as the unnamed Captain of the USS Saratoga in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), marking the first appearance, in any Star Trek series or movie, of a female starship Captain. She later guest starred on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) as Captain Silva La Forge, the mother of Geordi La Forge, played by LeVar Burton, one of her co-stars on the miniseries Roots (1977) -- in which Burton played the younger version Kunta Kinte and Sinclair played Bell Reynolds, wife of the older version of Kunta Kinte, played by John Amos (who was Sinclair's junior by 20 months).
- She played Ben Vereen's grandmother in Roots (1977) and his wife on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987).
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