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Dr. William Henry Bill Cosby, Jr. (born July 12,
1937) is an African-American actor and comedian. 

He was the first black man to star in his own
television series (with Robert Culp in I Spy in
the mid-1960s). This exposure led to a successful
stand-up comedy routine in the 1970s, which was
the basis for his situation comedy|sitcom, The
Cosby Show. The Cosby Show was very successful,
and notable for being one of the first to star a
well-to-do middle-class African-American family.
During the 1980s, Cosby was among the highest paid
entertainers in the United States. 

His popularity has diminished somewhat in recent
years, and his reputation has suffered due to
allegations of sexual harassment, but overall
Cosby remains an icon of popular culture. 

==Career==

Cosby was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at
Northwest Philadelphia's Germantown Hospital at
3:00 A.M. He joined the United States Navy in
tenth grade and completed high school through
correspondence courses. Later, he won an athletic
scholarship to Temple University. After working as
a bartender for several years, he began his career
as a stand-up comic, winning fame for his
performances and a series of record albums
beginning in 1963.  As a comedian, Cosby told
stories rather than jokes.  His breakout routine
as an imagined conversation between God and a
skeptical Noah, but Cosby found his richest vein
of humor in his Philadelphia childhood,
particularly in tales about his friends Fat
Albert, Cosby's brother Russell, and Old Weird
Harold.

TV producer Sheldon Leonard landed Cosby a
break-out television role in I Spy (1965), the
first time an African-American actor starred in a
weekly dramatic television series.  Cosby won two
Emmy Awards for his portrayal of an undercover
Central Intelligence Agency|CIA agent.

Cosby then appeared in a series of shows named
after himself: The Bill Cosby Show, The New Bill
Cosby Show, the animated Fat Albert and the Cosby
Kids, Cos (TV series)|Cos, The Cosby Show, The
Cosby Mysteries, and Cosby (based upon the British
series One Foot In The Grave). He has producer,
writer, director and even composer credits on many
of his projects.

Bill Cosby was a regular on the Captain Kangaroo
show in the 1980s, presenting the "Picture Pages"
segment which was later syndicated on its own.

He won several Grammy|Grammy awards for comedy
albums, had a top forty song ("Little Old Man") in
1969, and sang on a number of albums. He won more
Grammies for comedy than any other artist, winning
every year from 1965 to 1970 and again in 1987. As
of 2005, he had 3 gold- and 6 platinum-certified
comedy albums. He has also written several
humorous books about different aspects of life,
based on his stand-up comedy such as Fatherhood
and Love and Marriage. In fact, Fatherhood and
Time Flies were the best selling non-fiction
hardback books of 1986 and 1987, respectively.

Cosby has also made occasional forays into film
acting, but the critical and popular success which
came so abundantly to his stage and television
work has not blessed his movie performances: his
natural charisma has often been undermined by
mediocre scripts in films like The Devil and Max
Devlin (1981) and Ghost Dad (1990), and the
notorious flop Leonard Part 6 (1987),  although
his work in ensemble casts in Uptown Saturday
Night and Let's Do it Again, a pair of productions
headed up by Sidney Poitier in the mid-1970s,
received favorable reviews. 

A colorful work of Cosby was his portrayal as a
bigot in Bill Cosby on Prejudice (1971).

Cosby earned a doctorate in education from the
University of Massachusetts in 1977: his thesis
concerned the use of the Fat Albert series as a
teaching aid. He has attempted to integrate
education with television in some projects, such
as Picture Pages, where Cosby taught children how
to draw in a series of shorts aired by PBS.
Notably, he structured the 80's Cosby family to
represent children at all ages, and the addition
of Sandra as a Princeton-educated lawyer is meant
to show how good parenting and education of
children leads to success. The Cosby Show also
served as a vehicle to raise issues of drugs,
illiteracy, teen pregnancy, and gang violence. He
is now a leading educational philanthropist.

He hosted the television program, "Kids Say the
Darndest Things", which aired from 1996 through
2002.

He is married to Camille Hanks and they have four
daughters. Their only son Ennis Cosby, aged 27,
was murdered on January 16, 1997, while changing a
flat tire in Los Angeles, California. On March 12,
1997 Mikail Markhasev was arrested in Los Angeles
and charged with the attempted robbery and
shooting of Ennis.  He was convicted on July 7,
1998 and is currently serving a life-sentence
without the possibility of parole.

Cosby currently maintains a home in Shelburne,
Massachusetts.

==Honors== 

Cosby received Kennedy Center Honors in 1998 and
the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002.

In a British 2005 poll to find The Comedian's
Comedian, he was voted amongst the top 50 comedy
acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

==Political views==
During the 1970's, Cosby was on the "enemies list"
of President Richard Nixon.

Starting in 2004, Cosby publicly denounced black
communities for having low standards in allowing
fatherless single parent households, high crime
rates, and high illiteracy rates.  He further
stated that it was up to the black community to
fix its own problems.  He expanded upon his
remarks in San Jose, CA during an event to promote
the Read-2-Lead Classic. Anger over his remarks
continued, but often the validity of what Cosby
said wasn't in question (U.S. Senator Barack Obama
(D-IL) has made similar remarks regarding the
decline of the African-American family), it was
the forum that was the issue.

In May 2004|May 2004 Cosby made public remarks
critical of low-income African Americans whom he
believed to be deprioritizing education in favor
of sports and fashion.  As a result, Cosby came
under sharp criticism, however he was largely
unapologetic for his stance.  Cosby made similar
remarks during a speech on July 1 at a Rainbow
Coalition meeting commemorating the anniversary of
Brown v. Board of Education. During that speech,
he admonished struggling young men to "stop
beating up your wife because you can't find a job"
and stated that African-Americans had forgotten
the sacrifices of those in the Civil Rights
Movement. The talk was interrupted several times
by applause and received praise from leaders such
as Jesse Jackson.

==Controversy==

In 1997, Cosby was the target of allegations from
Autumn Jackson, a young woman who claimed she was
his daughter. In court, Cosby testified that he
had sex once with Jackson's mother, when he was
already married to his wife, Camille. Cosby
further admitted he gave financial support to
Jackson's mother. Cosby said he told Jackson he
would be a father figure to her, but that he was
not her father. Autumn Jackson was later convicted
on extortion charges.

In January 2005 a woman alleged she was drugged
and fondled by Cosby. The woman made the
allegations nine months after it allegedly took
place. In a statement from Cosby's publicist,
Cosby's attorney said, "the charges are
categorically false and we have no further
comment."

In February 2005 a second woman, California lawyer
Tamara Green (maiden name Lucia), came forward
alleging that in the 1970s she was drugged and
groped by Cosby. She claims that as she slipped
under the influence of the drug, Cosby attempted
to undress her, and as she grew to understand what
was occurring she stated that if he tried to rape
her he would have to kill her. Upon realizing she
would not, in her words, "be put into submission,"
he left her in her apartment with two
one-hundred-dollar bills. Cosby's attorney
continues to deny any merit to the allegations,
claiming "Mr. Cosby does not have any knowledge of
a woman named Tamara Green or Tamara Lucia."

There wasn't any proof that these last two alleged
allegations took place and Bill Cosby was
acquitted.

==Quotations==
* "Human beings are the only creatures that allow
their children to come back home and be happy."
* "I don't know the key to success, but the key to
failure is trying to please everybody."
* "Our children are angry. The profanity is out in
the street. It's on the buses and in the subway.
Our children are trying to tell us something, and
we are not listening."
* "The very first law in advertising is to avoid
the concrete promise and cultivate the
delightfully vague."

==Partial discography==
*Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Fellow--Right! 1963
*I Started Out as a Child 1964
*Why is there air? 1965
*Wonderfulness 1966
*Revenge 1967
*Silver Throat: Bill Cosby Sings 1967
*To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With 1968
*200 mph ~1968
*Bill Cosby Sings: Hooray for the Salvation Army
Band 1968
*8:15 12:15 1968
*The Best of Bill Cosby 1969
*It's True! It's True 1969
*Live Madison Square Garden Center 1970
*Sports 1970
*More of the Best of Bill Cosby 1970
*For Adults Only 1971
*Talk to Kids About Drugs 1971
*When I Was a Kid 1971
*Inside the Mind of Bill Cosby 1972
*Fat Albert 1973
*Bill 1973
*At Last Bill Cosby Really Sings 1974
*Bill Cosby is Not Himself These Days 1976
*Disco Bill 1977 
*My Father Confused Me... What Must I Do? What
Must I Do?  1977
*Bill's Best Friend 1978
*Himself (live performance) 1982
*Hard Headed Boys (EP) 1985 
*Those of You With or Without Children, You'll
Understand 1986
*Oh Baby 1991
*20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection:
The Best of Bill Cosby 2001
*The Bill Cosby Collection 2004

==Interesting Tidbits==
Dr. Cosby is an avid cigar smoker. He attributes
his cigar smoking to his comedy idol Groucho Marx.
Dr. Cosby also is an Omega Psi Phi brother.

==External links==
* imdb name | id = 0001070 | name = Bill Cosby