Sabrina Le Beauf

In 1984, Le Beauf auditioned for the role of the eldest Huxtable daughter Sondra on The Cosby Show. Aged 26 at the time of her audition, she was initially considered too old to play one of the children, being only 10 years younger than Phylicia Rashad, the actress who played her mother, Clair Huxtable. Pop singer Whitney Houston also auditioned for the same part, but refused to sign the contract as she also wanted to become a singer. Houston's refusal to sign the contract which would bind her to the show and put a singing career on the back burner forced the producers to give the role to Le Beauf. Sabrina went on to play Sondra Huxtable for all eight seasons of The Cosby Show, from 1984 through the series' end in 1992. Sondra, a Princeton graduate who went on to marry and start a family of her own, was a popular character on the show; in 1988, 50 million viewers tuned in to watch Sondra give birth to twins, named Winnie and Nelson in honor of Nelson and Winnie Mandela.

During her time on The Cosby Show, Le Beauf also appeared in the series Hotel and the TV movie Howard Beach: Making a Case for Murder. She also had brief appearances as bridge officer Ensign Giusti on two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and on the comedy The Sinbad Show.

Le Beauf also continued her work in the theater, performing in several productions of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., including Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew, Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Helena in All's Well That Ends Well, Cordelia in King Lear and Rosalind in As You Like It. Le Beauf also appeared in the off-Broadway play Love, Loss and What I Wore that ran from 2009 to 2012.