Lisa Michelle Bonet was born on November 16, 1967, in San
Francisco, California, and became involved in the entertainment
industry at an early age.
As a young girl, she started showing up at beauty competitions and
made guest appearances in television series as a child.
In 1984, Lisa Bonet was cast as Denise Huxtable on The Cosby Show.
At the time, sitcoms were kind of dying out, but the successful The
Cosby Show helped revive the genre. It became the number-onerated show on television for five years in a row.
Lisa’s character, Denise, was the second-oldest child in the family,
and Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad played her parents. Despite her
lack of acting experience, Bill Cosby plucked Lisa to be part of
America’s most popular fictive family
Soon after the series launched, Lisa became known as TV’s hottest
newcomer. She was a teen idol, a young adult’s heartthrob, and a
fresh face everyone recognized.
But during her successful spell with The Cosby Show, Lisa raised
many eyebrows after posing twice in adult magazines. She also
starred in the controversial movie Angel Heart, a film that barely
escaped an X rating after a hot love scene between her and Mickey
Rourke.
“Filming [the sex scene in Angel Heart] consisted of three hours of
intense lovemaking with blood pouring on us…It was a wild night,”
Lisa told Interview Magazine in 1987.
The scene caused tensions between Bill Cosby and Lisa. Cosby
wasn’t too happy with Lisa’s decision – it didn’t resonate with his
clean, family-oriented show.
”A lot of people who work on Cosby said, ‘Bill’s not going to want
you to do it,’ But I went to Cosby and he said, ‘Get out of my office
and just do the film,’” Lisa explained.
Lisa Bonet daughter
In 1987, Lisa left The Cosby Show for a short while and got her own
spin-off series called A Different World – a show that evolved
around her character Denise. But when she became pregnant in
1998, she left A Different World.
In 1991 Lisa was fired from The Cosby Show because of ”creative
differences.” After that, her Hollywood career started to fade, and
she became more focused on her love life, partners, and children.
Her first child came when she was just 21. Bonet and ex-husband
Lenny Kravitz (23 at the time) had Zoe in 1988, just a year after
their Las Vegas elopement