Olivia Cole, Award-Winning ‘Roots’ Actress, Is Dead at 75

Olivia Cole, an actress best known for her Emmy Award-winning role in the acclaimed miniseries “Roots,” died Friday at her home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She was 75.

The cause was a heart attack, said Linda Cooper, the executive secretary of the cremation and burial association that is handling Cole’s remains.

In 1977, Cole won a supporting-actress Emmy for her portrayal of Matilda, the wife of Chicken George (Ben Vereen), in “Roots,” the eight-episode ABC miniseries based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1976 book by Alex Haley. The series followed his ancestors’ journey from West Africa to the United States as slaves, and many generations beyond.

More than 28 million viewers watched the first episode, and by the time the finale arrived more than 100 million people had tuned in, breaking ratings records. That year, The New York Times reported, “people everywhere, even those who had not seen it, were talking about ‘Roots.'”

“I thought ‘Roots’ would be a boon to all black actors and actresses,” Cole told United Press International in 1977. “But that didn’t prove to be the case. At least my telephone didn’t start ringing off the hook afterwards. And I don’t think it helped many others.”

If “Roots” did not make Cole a star, she nonetheless continued to work for decades. She had roles in the miniseries “Backstairs at the White House,” which earned her an Emmy nomination; another miniseries, “The Women of Brewster Place,” produced by and starring Oprah Winfrey; the movie “First Sunday,” starring Tracy Morgan; and numerous theater productions.

“Backstairs,” seen on NBC in 1979, was a behind-the-scenes look at the White House as told by the people who worked there, based on a best-selling memoir. Cole played the role of the first black maid to be employed on “the presidential floor.”

“The wonderful thing about ‘Backstairs’ is that it offers a challenging role for an actress, not a black actress,” Cole told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1979. “If only people would stop thinking in terms of black and white, and think only of who’s the best in terms of ability!”

In 2016, Cole appeared in a production of the 1995 play “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years” at the Long Wharf Theater and Hartford Stage in Connecticut. The play, written by Emily Mann and based on the book of the same name, explored the bond between two elderly sisters who grew up in the Jim Crow era. Cole played Sadie Delany, who became a high school teacher; Brenda Pressley played Bessie Delany, who became a dentist.

“This is the sort of theater that feeds you,” Cole told The Harford Courant at the time.

Pressley, who had known Cole since the 1990s, described her in a phone interview as eccentric, spiritual and devoted to her craft.

“She demanded her time to really sink down into every moment that she wanted to convey,” Pressley said. Pressley and Cole prepared meals onstage as part of the play. But offstage, Pressley said, Cole avoided the kitchen.

“No darling, I don’t cook,” she recalled her saying. “In my oven I have books.”

Jade King Carroll, the director of that production, said in a phone interview that Cole “lived inside roles,” recalling that she would eat one clove of garlic a day because that’s what her character did.

The same year Cole appeared in “Having Our Say,” a new version of “Roots” was shown on the History Channel. Cole told ABC News at the time that it was a story every generation should know.

“We need to have these voices out here,” she said. “We need to know where we come from. We need to know how we got here.”

Olivia Carlena Cole was born on Nov. 26, 1942, in Memphis, Tennessee. Her mother, the former Arvelia Cage, was a tennis player and instructor who was inducted into the U.S. Tennis Association Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame in 1997. Her father, William Calvin Cole, worked for Grumman Aircraft. Her parents divorced after moving to New York City.

No immediate family members survive.

Cole graduated from Hunter College High School in New York City in 1960, studied drama at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and earned a scholarship to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she graduated with honors in 1964. Upon returning to the United States, she earned a master’s degree in theater arts in 1967 from the University of Minnesota. She minored in Scandinavian studies.

Her marriage to actor Richard Venture ended in divorce. He died in December. Cole lived in San Miguel de Allende, a city with a large artistic community filled with expatriates and retirees, for the last 35 years.

She created a Shakespeare club there, holding readings of Shakespeare’s 37 plays for three decades.

“She once told me that she thought she had done her best work in the Shakespeare group, just because she was learning so much,” Wendy Sievert, a close friend, said.

Cole lived alone in Mexico, but her friends said she had a vibrant social life.

“You walk down the street with her, 15 people would say hello,” Sievert said. “I think she knew everyone in town.”