Actress Ja’Net Dubois, star of the 1970s sitcom Good Times, died in her sleep on Tuesday. She was 74.
Dubois, born Jeanette Dubois, is best known for her playing neighborhood gossip Willona Woods on Good Times, the TV sitcom that was notable for being the first prime-time TV series with a Black, 2-parent household.
Dubois wrote and sang the theme song titled “Movin’ On Up” for The Jeffersons TV sitcom, starring Isabel Sanford and Sherman Helmsley.
Television producer Norman Lear discovered Dubois in a play at the Mark Taper Forum, which led to an audition for his innovative TV series Good Times, which ran from 1974-1979.
Dubois played adoptive mom to Janet Jackson‘s character, Penny, and she later appeared in Jackson’s “Control” music video as her mother in 1987.
Dubois’ film roles included I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988) and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003). She also appeared in the television series Moesha, The Steve Harvey Show, A Different World, The Wayans Brothers and Everybody Loves Raymond (as a school bus driver).
In the 1980s, Dubois founded the Ja’Net DuBois Academy of Theater Arts and Sciences for teenagers in Long Island, NY. She and Actor Danny Glover co-founded the Pan African Film & Arts Festival in Los Angeles.
DuBois had two children: Rani Dubois and Raj Kristo Gupta, who died of cancer in 1987 at age 36.
