Like Mother, Like Daughter:

The apple does not fall far from the tree. Like her mother (Diana Ross), Tracee Ellis Ross is fashionable and gorgeous. Her voluminous hair, beautiful, large eyes and contagious smile and laugh captured our hearts years ago when she played Joan on the hit television show “Girlfriends.” Today, she is in a new role playing Carla Reed on “Reed Between The Lines,” a sensational and fairly new television show which seems to carry the same positive, didactic messages as the loved Cosby Show. The show is funny and wholesome. It airs on BET and co-stars Malcolm Jamal Warner. There seems to be a strange life-like progression of her characters as her newest character seems to have found the love and is living the life her old character longed for.

We are thrilled to find she is on the cover of the February/March 2012 issue of Uptown magazine and below you will find a snippet of the interview found at UptownMagazine.com:

“My mom’s career gave me the benefit of a great life and influenced my style and who I am as a person. I felt afraid about that early on in my career, [but] I am comfortable enough in my own skin now. And Hollywood does not work like that. They will unlock the door, but they sit back and wait to see how you are going to walk through the door.”

“I was shy, but it came out in a big personality. My turning point was when I let my hair go naturally and I got contact lenses. I am really blind, by the way. I have these big eyes that don’t work!”

“As a younger person, my philosophy was jump off a cliff. I realize now that there are stairs and elevators. I am learning every day to allow the space between where I am and where I want to be to inspire me and not terrify me. I can even ask for help! Not feeling that I have to know everything, and that’s where the growth comes in, in the not knowing.”

“I have loved magazines since I was a child … And let me explain something, I do not read magazines, I look at the pictures … When I was in high school I would make wish boards. They were feelings and images, not words. It was all fashion.”

It is apparent her sense of style and her fashion aptitude developed long before we met her, long before we loved her, long ago when we, too, were influenced by her mother’s incredible style and grace.