Tessa Thompson

Tessa Lynn Thompson, an artist and performer from Los Angeles was born in 1983. She is the daughter and great-granddaughter of the musician Marc Anthony Thompson, as also actor Bobby Ramos. She grew up in Los Angeles, before she made the move to Brooklyn. Her mother has Mexican as well as British Isles heritage, while her father is Afro-Panamanian. Thompson went to Santa Monica High School, where she played in various theatre productions. In the years following her graduation, she attended Santa Monica College where she earned a degree on cultural Anthropology. In a performance at Pasadena's Boston Court Theatre, she was Juliet in William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". The same year, her performance won the NAACP Theatre Nomination. Her first appearance on television was during 2005, when she starred on CBS.