Leslie Uggams (born May 25, 1943 in New York City) is American actress and singer, best known for her Tony Award-winning work in Hallelujah, Baby!

Uggams first started in show business as a child in 1950, playing the niece of Ethel Waters on the television series Beulah. She was a regular on Sing Along with Mitch, starring record producer/conductor Mitch Miller. In 1960 she sang "Give Me That Old Time Religion" in the film Inherit the Wind.

She would audition for the lead part in the film Cleopatra, but would lose out to Elizabeth Taylor. (Actress Dorothy Dandridge was also in the running, when director Rouben Mamoulian was to direct, but her part was lost when the director was taken off the project).

Since then, Uggams has had a variety show added to her list of credits (The Leslie Uggams Show) as well as one of the lead roles in Roots, as Kizzy. Uggams also starred in the 1975 film Poor Pretty Eddy (also called Poor Pretty Eddie, Black Vengeance and Redneck County), in which she played a popular singer who, upon being stranded in the deep South, is abused and humiliated by the perverse denizens of a backwoods town.

Uggams appeared on TV gameshow Hollywood Squares. After being asked if Roman legend says that God made the people of the world in a large oven, fellow contestant Paul Lynde looked at her and remarked "Looks like you were overcooked".

During the 1980s Uggams appeared in Blues in the Night, Jerry's Girls, and replaced Patti LuPone as Reno Sweeney in the Lincoln Center revival of Cole Porter's musical Anything Goes. Later Broadway roles include Muzzy in Thoroughly Modern Millie and Ethel Thayer in On Golden Pond at the Cort Theatre. In 1996, Uggams played the role of Rose Keefer on All My Children. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

The Leslie Uggams Show was a musical variety television series aired in the United States by CBS as part of its 1969 fall lineup.

The Leslie Uggams Show gave the talented Uggams, who had first come to wide public notice as a singer on the early 1960s hit Sing Along With Mitch, her own program to showcase herself and other black performers; unlike other early variety programs which were hosted by black entertainters but featured a large number of whites in the cast, only one of Uggams' regulars, comedian Dennis Allen, was white. A recurring feature of the program was the ongoing series of sketches entitled "Sugar Hill", which dealt with the lives of middle class black family in a large American city.

Scheduled against the venerable Western Bonanza, which was still a massive hit for NBC, and a series of fairly recent (by the standards of the era) movies on ABC, The Leslie Uggams Show had difficulty developing an audience and was cancelled in December.

This was the replacement for "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The" (1967) after that show was cancelled due to its content.

She is also a board member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, and TADA, a children's musical theatre.

Among her most recent concerts are the Pittsburgh Symphony, Rhode Island Symphony, and The Memorial Day Concert on the Washington Mall, in front of 300,000 people, televised live by PBS.

Off stage, Leslie is a founding member of the BRAVO Chapter/City of Hope - a charitable organisation dedicated to the study, treatment, and eradication of all blood-related diseases.

Raised in the Washington Heights section of New York City.

She made her national television debut at age six on the TV series "Beulah" (1950), portraying the niece of Ethel Waters.

She began performing regularly at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem as an extra added attraction before the performances of such legends as Louis Armstrong (I), Ella Fitzgerald, and Dinah Washington at age six.

In 1987, she toured with Peter Nero and Mel Tormé in "The Great Gershwin Concert", for which she received rave reviews, and, in 1988, starred as Reno Sweaney, in the National Company of the Lincoln Center Production of "Anything Goes".

Reprised her role in 1989/90 at the Lincoln Center's Vivien Beaumont Theatre on Broadway. 1991 saw Leslie touring in "Stringbean", a new play with music based on Ethel Waters' rise to fame in the twenties and thirties.

Tony Award winner for Best Actress in a Musical for "Hallelujah, Baby!" in 1968.

Won Broadway's 1968 Tony Award as Best Actress (Musical) for "Hallelujah, Baby!" in a tie with Patricia Routledge for "Darling of the Day." She was also nominated in 2001 as Best Actress (Play) for August Wilson's "King Hedley II."

Was in the audience when Buddy Holly & The Crickets made their debut at the Apollo Theater in 1957.

She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority,Incorporated.