
Acting
Aug 2, 1950
Albany, Georgia, USA
Jo Marie Payton
Acting
Biography
Jo Marie Payton is an American actress and singer who starred as Harriette Baines–Winslow, the matriarch of the Winslow family on the ABC/CBS sitcom Family Matters (1989–1998), a role she originated on its forerunner series Perfect Strangers. From 2001 to 2005, Payton provided the voice for Suga Mama Proud (Penny Proud's grandmother) on Disney Channel's animated series The Proud Family and Disney+’s upcoming revival The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder. The role earned her an NAACP Image Award nomination in 2005. Payton also had a recurring role as the personal assistant to Gregory Hines' character, Ben Doucette (Will Truman's boss), during season two of Will & Grace (1999–2000).
Feature Films (20)

A Beverly Hills housewife in the middle of a divorce tries to find focus in her life by taking over her daughter's Wilderness Girls troop.
Troop Beverly Hills

A confident young cop is shown the ropes by a veteran partner in the dangerous gang-controlled barrios of Los Angeles, where the gang culture is enforced by the colors the members wear.
Colors

A wanna-be blues guitar virtuoso seeks a long-lost song by legendary musician, Robert Johnson.
Crossroads

The matriarch of a family calls all her children home for Christmas, but this will be a vacation full of surprises as lovers bond and family members collide.
Momma Said Come Home for Christmas

Christmas is anything but ordinary when three bickering siblings from a newly blended household cannot see eye to eye. The youngest one, while completing his annual science project, accidentally calls upon the spirit of Christmas. They wake up to find themselves having switched bodies, unable to change back until they learn to spend the holidays together as a loving family.
A Family Matters Christmas

High school teacher Stephanie breaks the cardinal rule of not getting romantically involved with one of her students. To make things worse, her handsome teenage lover James starts to demonstrate psychotic, obsessive behavior. When James starts stalking Stephanie and her family, Stephanie is forced to teach James the ultimate dangerous lesson.
A Student's Obsession

Two strangers who both happen to be in marketing, share a room at a bed-and-breakfast when a snowstorm strands their flight in Montana on Christmas Eve.
The Flight Before Christmas

Arms dealers from several companies vie to sell the most expensive and highest tech weapons to a South American dictator. There are complications; understanding the exact nature of how 'gifts' are used to grease the wheels of a sale, a religious conversion from one of the salesman and a romance that begins to grow between two competitors.
Deal of the Century

A young reporter and his niece discover a beautiful and enchanting creature they believe to be the real little mermaid.
The Little Mermaid

Upon returning to Los Angeles to attend his father's funeral, Damon soon learns that in order to claim his share of the family inheritance he must work alongside his brother, Mookie — a former drug-dealer who had previously cost Damon a college scholarship — in keeping the family's long-running gas station in business for at least one year. As the siblings repeatedly butt heads over matters both great and small, they soon come to realize that it takes more than money to hold a family together.
Gas

Penny and her family are lured on an all expenses paid vacation where a mad scientist captures them, refusing to let them go because Oscar won't reveal his on of his secret Proud Snacks formulas.
The Proud Family Movie

Patrice and Corrine are two sexy, confident women with great relationships, but they've got it all wrong when it comes to love. Before they drive their men crazy, they've got some tough lessons to learn about trust and fidelity, if they hope to make love last.
From This Day Forward
Television & Series (26)

Follow the adventures and misadventures of Penny, a 14-year-old African American girl who's doing her best to navigate through the early years of teen-dom. Penny's every encounter inevitably spirals into bigger than life situations filled with hi-jinks, hilarity and heart. Her quest to balance her home, school and social lives are further complicated by friends like the sassy Dijonay, Penny's nemesis LaCienega Boulevardez, her loving, if not over-protective parents and her hip-to-the-groove-granny, Suga Mama.
The Proud Family

After her dentist husband of 20 years leaves her for his dental hygienist, Reba Hart's seemingly perfect world is turned upside down.
Reba

Looking down on her friends and family isn't a way of life for Mary Alice Young... it's a way of death. One day, in her perfect house, in the loveliest of suburbs, Mary Alice ended it all. Now she's taking us into the lives of her family, friends and neighbors, commenting from her elevated P.O.V.
Desperate Housewives

The chronicles of the rocky coexistence of midwestern American Larry Appleton and his distant cousin from eastern Mediterranean Europe, Balki Bartokomous.
Perfect Strangers

Judging Amy is an American television drama that was telecast from September 19, 1999, through May 3, 2005, on CBS-TV. This TV series starred Amy Brenneman and Tyne Daly. Its main character is a judge who serves in a family court, and in addition to the family-related cases that she adjudicates, many episodes of the show focus on her own experiences as a divorced mother, and on the experiences of her mother, a social worker who works in the field of child welfare. This series was based on the life experiences of Brenneman's mother.







