Nineteen-year-old Cosby Show star Lisa Bonet was about to headline her own spinoff, A Different World, when she made her film debut as voodoo priestess Epiphany Proudfoot in Angel Heart, an erotic thriller in which she fogged up the lens with costar Mickey Rourke while (fake) chicken blood poured down on their naked bodies. Heart initially earned an X rating, and Bonet only made things worse when she posed topless for Interview and nude in Rolling Stone in the months following its release.
CAREER IMPACT Major. Heart flopped, and Bonet's film career stalled. At the end of World's first season, the newly pregnant actress was effectively dumped from her own series. In September 1988, she returned to The Cosby Show; three years later, she was fired amid rumors of missed rehearsals and on-set tantrums, which she denied. She has made only sporadic film appearances since.
IMDB Bio:
Lisa Bonet was born in San Francisco but has lived most of her life in New York and Los Angeles, where she attended Reseda High School and Celluloid Actor's Studio. Lisa is the child of a Jewish mother and a black father who was a music teacher. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she began acting in commercials at the age of 11. At age 16, she landed the role of Denise Huxtable in the hit comedy series "The Cosby Show" (1984). The show made her a popular actress. In the mid '80s, she met
Lenny Kravitz at a New Edition concert in Los Angeles. At the time, Lenny was a struggling, unknown musician who went by the name Romeo Blue. It wasn't long after they started dating that Lisa and Lenny's relationship was all over the tabloids. The two lovers were said to be soulmates, as they both shared a neo-hippie persona and biracial background (Lenny is also half-black, half-Jewish). In 1987 Lisa and Lenny got married (they went to Las Vegas and eloped), and they had a daughter named Zoe in 1988. By 1989, Lenny had landed a record deal and recorded his first album, "Let Love Rule." Lisa co-wrote a couple of songs on the album and was said to be the inspiration for most of the album. Lisa even directed Lenny's first video for "Let Love Rule." But Lisa and Lenny's relationship was full of problems from the start, including intense scrutiny from the media and Lenny's reported infidelities. It was around this time that Lisa made a deliberate attempt to shed her "goody-two-shoes" Cosby daughter image by making the controversial movie
Angel Heart (1987), wherein she had racy nude and sex scenes. The backlash from making
Angel Heart (1987) is rumored to have prompted Lisa's exit from
"The Cosby Show" (1984). But with
Bill Cosby's help, Lisa landed on another comedy series,
"A Different World" (1987), in which she starred as a student at a historically black university. But perhaps because of her personal problems, Lisa began showing up late for work (or sometimes not at all), and she was fired from the series. She and Lenny separated in a bitter breakup and eventually divorced in 1993. Lenny's second album, "Mama Said," filled with songs about heartache, is said to be mostly about Lisa. After her divorce from Lenny, Lisa faded from the high-profile stardom she had experienced when she was in a relationship with him, while Lenny became more famous than his ex-wife. No longer an in-demand actress, Lisa occasionally made B-movies, many of which went straight to video. In 1992, Lisa started dating yoga instructor Bryan Kest. They began living together and had a child in the mid '90s (son Desikachar). It was around this time that Lisa legally changed her name to Lilakoi Moon, although she still uses the name
Lisa Bonet for her entertainment career. Lisa has said that she has deliberately cut back on acting so that she could spend more time with her family. However, she did make a brief return to the spotlight in 1998 by co-starring with
Will Smith in the big-budget hit movie
Enemy of the State (1998) and had an important role in
High Fidelity (2000). Lisa has since become friends with her ex-husband Lenny again. And in an "aren't we all just one big happy family" situation, her best friend is
Cree Summer, a former co-star on
"A Different World" (1987) who released an album produced by her long-time friend
Lenny Kravitz. It was Lisa who suggested that Lenny produce the album, and Lisa directed a promotional video for the album. As of 2007, Lisa lives in the Los Angeles area with her children.