LYNN WHITFIELD:Follow YOUR DREAMS

The Chi's star talks about her new film and shares thoughts on her life and long career

- Jim Colucci

From the age of 5, Lynn Whitfield went to the movies with her grandmother and sat mesmerized and inspired by the faces on the big screen.

"I didn't notice that Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn weren't brown," she tells Closer, "and I didn't really notice that Ruby Dee, Lena Horne and Diahann Carroll were brown." In acting, she adds, "I just saw something that I thought I would be able to do well."

The Baton Rouge, La., native found her first success onstage in her early 20s in the 1977 LA production of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf. But it's on TV where her star began to shine most brightly, in The Women of Brewster Place and in the title role of HBO's 1991 telefilm The Josephine Baker Story, for which she won that year's Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy Award.

More recently, Lynn, 71, has appeared as two fearsome matriarchs - as Lady Mae in the OWN network drama Greenleaf and currently as the revenge-driven Alicia on Showtime's The Chi. Lynn also stars in the new big-screen adventure Albany Road, which opened in theaters on Nov. 15.

Tell us about your role in Albany Road.

In Albany Road, I'm playing against type, as a simple, more flat-footed and straightforward kind of woman. There's no glamour, and hardly any makeup, so it's a departure from roles that I'm often offered.

The movie explores intricate family relationships. I took on the role shortly after my only brother passed. I feel I have a whole new view of life and mortality, of family love and complexity, and this film gave me the opportunity to use all those things in a very vital way.

You're also on Showtime's The Chi.